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Gigi Perez, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter, had been dropped by her record label in the middle of a promotional trip to London and moved back to her parents’ house in Florida. She decided to give herself a year to learn how to record and produce her own songs, and then everything happened. Gigi created a global hit single out of nowhere. Sailor Song, a love ballad about falling for a woman who looks like the actress Anne Hathaway, exploded online in June and quickly became a real-world success. It reached number one in the UK, Ireland and Latvia, and made the top 10 everywhere from New Zealand to Belgium.
Gigi had been self-taught on piano and guitar, and went straight to the top of the US streaming charts with her self-released debut single, Sometimes (Backwood), in 2021. The song earned her a contract with Interscope Records and Gigi supported Coldplay on their Music of the Spheres tour before she had even played a headline show of her own. In some ways, this initial wave of success created a pressure to expand her career too quickly. For a long time, she felt “stuck and limited” by her lack of progression.
However, after being dropped by her record label, Gigi taught herself how to produce songs by watching YouTube tutorials and Sailor Song was produced in her bedroom using low-tech equipment. Gigi’s androgynous vocals are a standout feature of the song, and the chorus is unforgettable. Despite criticism from evangelicals for the line: “I don’t believe in God, but you’re my savior”, Gigi’s response was uncompromising. “My songwriting is not a democracy”, she wrote, “and that applies to every artist’s work.”
Gigi’s struggles with faith run deep due to growing up gay in a hostile environment. Her parents became born-again Christians when she was in primary school and her mother took extra work as a bus driver to pay for Gigi and her sisters to attend a private religious school in Florida. Her big sister Celene died suddenly in the early months of 2020, which shook Gigi to the core. Her latest release, Fable, is another attempt to confront that grief, lashing out at people who feebly offered “thoughts and prayers” after her sister’s death, and wondering why disconnecting from faith makes her “skin start to burn”.
Gigi’s music is heavily influenced by her personal experiences, and she hopes that her music can help others in vulnerable moments. Despite her record label woes, Gigi is now signed to Island Records and has already achieved global success. It is evident that she is just getting started and has a bright future ahead of her
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