Gigi Perez - Sailor Song

Gigi Perez is a singer and songwriter from Florida, and at 25 years old, she’s already had so many ups and downs in her music career. She started sharing her songs on TikTok, where they got enough attention that she got signed to a major label deal, but that ultimately didn’t pan out. Soon after that, as an independent artist again, she had her biggest breakout hit, with “Sailor Song.” She released it in July 2024, and it went viral on TikTok. Now, it has over a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it’s a part of her new album, which came out in April 2025. In this episode, you’ll hear how the song evolved, from her first voice memo to the final version, which she recorded in her childhood bedroom. I talked to Gigi about how “Sailor Song” came about, and about all the different parts of herself that she put into it—her faith, grief, desire, and more. For more info, visit songexploder.net/gigi-perez. https://songexploder.net/gigi-perez

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform.

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 1:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music, and Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations. Because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more.

• 2:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains explicit language. Gigi Perez is a singer and songwriter from Florida. And at 25 years old, she's already had so many ups and downs in her music career. She started sharing her songs on TikTok, where they got enough attention that she got signed to a major label deal. But that ultimately didn't pan out. Soon after that, as an independent artist again, she had her biggest breakout hit with Sailor Song. She released it in July 2024, and it went viral on TikTok. Now, it has over a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it's part of her new album, which came out in April 2025.

• 3:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  In this episode, you'll hear how the song evolved from her first voice memo to the final version, which she recorded in her childhood bedroom. I talk to Gigi about how Sailor Song came about and about all the different parts of herself that she put into it: her faith, grief, desire, and more.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  My name is Gigi Perez. I grew up in the church and the whole nine yards of it. I think everyone in my life was kind of surprised when they saw me starting to play the guitar. But, you know, if you're like a seven year old being exposed to the concept of eternity and you don't really have the emotional intelligence or tools to understand any of it, you know, it causes a lot of questions. And so I think that songwriting was just the way for me to like, kind of lay everything out like, okay, this is what I think is going on right now inside of me and what's happening out there.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  And I was able to, for the first time, really process what was happening. Like when I was 15 and I was songwriting for the first time, that was the first time that I acknowledged to myself that I liked girls. And that was a whole can of worms that I opened, acknowledging that and what it was going to take to really understand that I did that through music.

• 5:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where were you when your songwriting first started?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I grew up in South Florida. There's not really a music scene for the kind of music that I was making. So I pulled out loans and I went to school for music. I did probably a full year of school. Half of it was online because COVID hit. And then my sister passed away that summer. She passed away and that was a, you know, very dark time in my life and my family's life. And I just hit this point where I just felt like I had nothing to lose and I was so desperate for connection. I was really desperate to have some sort of distraction from this like very massive hole in my heart and in my life.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  So I just started posting these songs and then I got signed when I was 20. Go through my first record deal and there were a lot of really beautiful moments from that experience, but it was also full of a lot of resistance and nobody knows what's going on with TikTok and how it's affecting the music industry. I was like a guinea pig, you know, so I leave the music business and everything that that meant and I was grateful that my parents let me come back home and they were very happy about it. And I was like happy to be back, but also there were notes of defeat and of, you know, I'm 24 and I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm applying for freelance work

• 6:50Speaker 01

  to like write a happy birthday song for like an eight year old and nobody's answering, so I'm not even getting work, but I'm trying.

• 6:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And so in the middle of all this, how did Sailor's song first start? What was happening that day?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It was February 29th. I was on my bed in my childhood room. I go to these chords.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Just messing around. I was like Kiss Me On The Mouth and Love Me Like Sailor and then it just immediately came out.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  It was just the chorus of the song. I made a video of it that same day.

• 8:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And you posted the video on TikTok?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cause I was like, I was like, I fuck with this. Like, sorry, I don't know. Can I say that word on here?

• 8:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Sure.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So you wrote the chorus.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What was the story in your mind? Like, what was the song at that point, even in that little nascent version of it? What did you think the story was gonna be and where was it gonna go from there?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  You know, I really, I loved that I got across that feeling, that like desperate fervent attraction to someone and like sense of like, let's just get out of here. Like this life and all this shit is so crazy. But you're my focal point in an otherwise very chaotic world.

• 8:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was that something that you were feeling at the time?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. Very clear. Like I was waking up yearning for this person, you know, going to sleep, yearning for them, you know, that fun little game.

• 9:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it was very much like real and it's just a feeling of relief to be able to get it out. Like saying something in a way that explains exactly what I'm feeling and in a way that I just didn't expect myself to be able to describe is the relief for me.

• 9:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  After you'd written those words for the chorus, where did you go next?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I knew that I wanted the song to grow. You want it to get smaller and sweet and you also want to know that you're climbing to that more explosive moment that comes in the chorus. I remember the melody following me from this song that I had written a while ago.

• 10:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Okay, so you have this older song and you kept the vocal melody, but you changed the lyrics?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was it hard to reimagine it with new words?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Certain melodies that I write become so easy to write words to. With Sailor and the verses, I was like, I saw her in the rightest way. It was funny because I was like, I said it and I was like, that's not really, you don't say that. But it like happened. I saw her in the rightest way, looking like in Hathaway.

• 10:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How much do you feel compelled to make it as close to your actual experience versus fictionalizing it? Which is a roundabout way of me saying like, do you think that the person that you are writing about actually looks like Anne Hathaway? Are you like, that's a nice rhyme?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I love to write about the real things, but it's the feeling of it. So for Anne Hathaway, it's just like the beauty. It's like, oh my god, like, she's gorgeous. Like, I grew up watching Princess Diaries and Devil Wears Prada. It's the sentiment of like, that unbelievable breathtaking beauty that, you know, reminded me. At that time, I had been messing on Ableton and like, every single day, I'm learning how to record and produce. And I knew that I wanted to take it seriously. So I bought a MIDI keyboard. I knew how to record acoustic guitars and my vocals.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  And I think that's like, the heartbeat of what makes it mine, is how I record guitars. And doing that, I think, really set the bed. And so I think there were like, five guitars on there. The vocals, for me, that was just the biggest learning piece of like, how do I like my vocals to sound and to sit? And so, there's one in the center. And maybe I tried other things, but nothing can capture the state One on left and right.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Of the venom she's gonna spit out right now.

• 12:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What made you decide that the right approach was multiple guitars, multiple vocals?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  So I have this friend, Eric, his producer name is Arceus. And he helped me a lot when it came to learning how to record and produce. Like, he was the first person I was ever in the studio with when I was 19. And at the time, he was doing like EDM music. And so I would go over to his studio and he would just give me lessons on things. And he taught me, record a guitar on the left and record a guitar on the right. And I was like, okay, that's cool. He makes very different music than I make, but I kind of applied things that he taught me in a different way, if that makes sense, like, in a different context, and took that and ran with it.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I found that like sizzly, deep, brooding bass. The depth and the feeling like it felt dramatic. It felt traumatic. All the addicts, you know, like it felt like I just was like making a sonic movie in my mind out of like intense feelings that I live with. So the song, the way that it's sung is from a place of like just feeling so out of control. And, you know, I did, I did worship team growing up.

• 13:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What's that?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Worship team. Oh, what is worship team? I'll tell you. There was an American church and then there was also a Spanish evangelical church. Most of my life I was in the Spanish one. And before the service, you sing worship songs. I did that and I felt very connected to this divine thing and I knew it through the medium of Christianity. And it was always very intense, like there's people praying, people speaking in tongues. It's very, very heavy. And I'm on like the stage singing while this happening. You like put your hands up, you're like feeling the Holy Spirit. And it's such a relief to sing. It's such a spiritual experience for me.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Then I started thinking, it was like, maybe the reason why I sing the way I do is because I'm desperate to connect and I feel that divine thing. That may have affected the sonics of Sailor Song is like, I feel like I was just desperate to connect to that thing.

• 15:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I just want to ask you about the lyrics here.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:10Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Because, how do I put this? It's not, not an explicit song.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did that cause any ripples for you with your Christian upbringing?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Hmm. You know, I think I like really swept all that under the rug when I came out with my first song and I said "fuck me right" in it. So I feel like I got everything out of the way.

• 15:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  So I don't fear being explicit. Sometimes I like to, I'm like, do I have like a potty mouth or like, I don't know. I understand like why that would be upsetting. Not upsetting, but like, are like the pastors gonna hear that? Granted, I think the most explicit thing that I could have said was not even the sexual aspects. It was me saying, "I don't believe in God." (Singing) I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior. My mom says that she's worried, but I'm covered in his favor. And like, that's a whole thing. Like, it caused like, in my life, a very big discourse of conversations about faith and religion and all that kind of stuff.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  But to me, like, I love the conversation that it put me in, you know?

• 16:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  It doesn't like make me wince because I just, I don't let myself be ashamed that I thought that or that I said that, you know? There are people that think that way and if it makes you uncomfortable, then like, that's okay, it's not for you, you know?

• 16:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  The thing is like, I don't know. I think that if like my parents can get over it, everybody can. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like-

• 16:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah. But what did it mean for you personally to put it in this song?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  The crisis of faith was very fervent. It's probably like always been that way since I grew up that way, but I think after my sister died, I just really started to, like, you just slowly lose your reality. It's not like you wake up one day and you don't believe in Jesus. It's many thoughts over many years. You kind of just wake up and you're like, "I don't know what to believe anymore." And every night I would be laying in my bed till 3 a.m. crying because I'm like desperate for a God. I was having fun with the production and learning how to record. Like, that was my outlet, but it was also a very painful time because of the silence.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Because I still feel like that 12-year-old trying to understand truth. And so I think that, for me, it was like shameful to say, but it was the truth. It was the truth in the moment, and I felt very scared of that. And I knew that that was gonna be in the song because it needed to be, because it was how I felt. And I'm okay with that right now.

• 17:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Gigi Perez continues after this.

• 18:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thanks to Stio for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer, and because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there, and I realized I made a huge mistake. Now, though, I have a Stio hometown hooded jacket, and I just wished I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work, and ski in below-freezing temperatures. I'm headed back out into the cold this winter, but now I'll have my insulated, hooded Stio jacket. Ski season's almost here, so gear up now, the way the locals do.

• 18:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Go to stio.com/songexploder for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash songexploder. Stio dot com slash songexploder. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Thanks to Reddit for sponsoring Song Exploder. One of the best parts of being a music fan is finding other people who love the same music that you do. And one of the things I love about Reddit is that there are so many different places to find that kind of community. If you want to nerd out about shoegaze, there are literally thousands of users on the r/shoegaze subreddit.

• 19:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Or if you're into 90s hip-hop, or opera, or vaporwave, there are subreddits for all of that. Over on r/indieheads, there are hundreds of thousands of indie music fans. And for me, that subreddit is one of the main hubs on the internet to find out about new music. And it's always really exciting to see anyone on Reddit discussing a Song Exploder episode by their favorite band. Every song has a story, and on Reddit, fans are the ones telling that story. Find the details, the deep cuts, and a Reddit community that loves the music as much as you do. Download the Reddit app today. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel

• 20:10Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 20:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  The song starts with this sound.

• 20:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What is that, and where did that come from?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  That is a splice sample.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I was like, "These feel like pelicans. They sound like birds to me." When I heard it for the first time, I just felt like something's about to happen. When I'd started the song, I was like, "Okay, this drum is like dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun." That drum pattern felt so powerful that it almost felt like there needed to be like a call.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  That's what my voice wanted to do.

• 21:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Had you sung like that ever before in a song?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  No, but I think in the last two years of my life, I started to implement more of my classical training. My oldest sister, she was an opera singer, and I think that maybe there are pieces of like me that want to feel closer to her, and so I used that part of my voice that I didn't use when I was younger.

• 21:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Hmm, that's beautiful.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  So Noah Weinman, he is a producer and a mutual friend of ours connected us because I was looking for a friend that was down to collaborate, someone that was interested in co-production.

• 22:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And so I sent it to him and he was like, oh my God. He heard it, he immediately knew where he wanted to take it and he was like, oh, like I think adding like light percussion.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I was so excited to see what he brings to it because I knew that I wanted piano on it. One of my favorite parts about the song and what he added was just that like dun dun dun dun dun. It's kind of like one note, but it like propels the song into the next part of it. They gave it a very intentional phrasing, section by section.

• 22:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And can you tell me where this part came from?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  That is also a Splice sample because I knew that I was like interested in trumpets, but I don't know anybody that like plays a trumpet. So I was just looking for stuff and I came across that on Splice and I was like playing it right over the chorus.

• 23:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And do you remember how you felt when you first heard those parts together?

• 23:29Speaker 01

  My mind was blown because I had never even like used a sample in that way.

• 23:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  But it felt like once I heard it, it was super integral that I was like, I can't just like not use it. That is the sample.

• 23:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So how is the song feeling to you after you had the samples and all the tracks from Noah and everything that you had done?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I was like over the moon. I was so happy with it. I remember dancing like crazy.

• 24:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  The desperation that you were so happy to capture in this song, the desperate yearning and also the desperate feelings around faith and loss of faith. Is that a feeling that you still have these days?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I think that that was scratching the surface.

• 24:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Like, that was just the start of the desperation?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Unfortunately. I think that it was acknowledging it through music for the first time. Because it's hard sometimes to find the words. But for some reason, if I do it in a song, I can see things a little bit more clearly.

• 24:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So do you think the experience of writing this song has changed you?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  This song completely changed my life and my circumstances as I knew them. I haven't been home all year because I've been touring. Honestly, my life has changed very, very drastically. But the biggest thing for me is that this song put me in a place to find my community. There are people who feel the same and people that are listening. It's helping me feel less alone. And that I find beautiful.

• 25:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's Sailor Song by Gigi Perez in its entirety.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  And then she came up to my knees Begging, "Baby, would you please" Do the things you said you'd do to me To me, oh To kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor And when you get a taste, can you tell me what's my flavor? I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior My mom says that she's worried, but I'm covered in this flavor And when we're getting dirty, I forget all that is wrong

• 27:14Speaker 02

  I sleep so I can see you, 'cause I hate to wait so long

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Sleep so I can see you, and I hate to wait so long

• 27:30Speaker 02

  She took my fingers to her mouth The kind of thing that makes you proud That nothing else had ever worked out, worked out And maybe I tried other things But nothing can capture the state Of the better she's gonna stay out, right now Oh, to kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor

• 28:15Speaker 02

  And when you get a taste, can you tell me what's my flavor? I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior I know that You've been worried, but you're dripping in my favor. You're glad we're getting dirty, I forget all that is wrong. I sleep so I can see you, 'cause I hate to wait so long.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  I sleep so I can see you, and I hate to wait so long. You can run away to the walls inside your house. I can be the cat, baby, you can be the mouse. We can love off things that we know nothing about. We can go forever until you wanna sit it out.

• 29:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Sailor Song, and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Mary Dolan, Craig Ely, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm watching and listening to and thinking about these days, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website.

• 29:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Radiotopia. From PRX.