Saturday Night Live music: Sara Bareilles performs ‘Fire,’ ‘Saint Honesty’

This weekend, Saturday Night Live is bringing out Sara Bareilles as the musical guest — basically, a cause for great rejoicing. She’s a fantastic musician and New York staple these days with a good many hits already under her belt. However, with many of those hits from past albums and us a little more unfamiliar with her more-recent fare, we had curiosity and uncertainty entering this episode as to what she would bring to studio 8H tonight.

Within this piece, we’re going to be here the break down the performances as they happen!

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First performance, “Fire” – This song is off Sara’s new album Amidst the Chaos, and this felt very much like a signature singer-songwriter piece from her with her sitting behind the piano and surrounded by a number of other musicians. There’s no questioning that her voice can cut through just about everything and she remains one of the best lyricists working.

If there’s something that we’d offer up as criticism, it’s that sometimes, a less-is-more approach is better. We would’ve preferred a chance to see a little bit more of a stripped-back version where we could’ve heard more of the piano, which was washed away a little bit by the larger band around her. This feels like one of those songs that’s going to get better and better every time we hear it — “Brave” was one of those for us.

Second Performance, “Saint Honesty” – Our favorite of the two tonight, mostly because it was a little bit more intimate as we could hear Sara on the piano alongside some of her lyrics. This is a powerful ballad with some great gospel tones in its chord structure and the way in which it moves between some of its verses. There’s something reflective about a great Bareilles song — it makes you drift away from everything in the world and allows you to just focus on what she’s singing.

We gotta think that if you love Sara’s work, you were very satisfied with what you got a chance to hear from her across the show tonight. Remember that in addition to the two major performances tonight, Sara also made a major role in the Theresa May sketch as she performed “She Used to Be Mine” while we watched Kate McKinnon go about her day and experience a series of failures, one right after the next.

Next week on SNL, there’s going to be another notable musical guest in BTS — arguably the biggest boy band in the entire world at the moment.

For some other SNL news and coverage…

Remember to visit the link here right now! Meanwhile, share your thoughts on Sara’s performances tonight in the comments. (Photo: NBC.)