When Gigi Perez releases her debut album, don’t be surprised if there are multiple tracks, like her hit “Sailor Song,” that have water-related themes. After all, it’s how she was raised.
Gigi, who was born in New Jersey but grew up in Florida, says that when she wrote “Sailor Song” she realized that it was the continuation of something she’d started exploring several years prior.
“I remember I was in London. I was being [dropped] from my first record label, and that day I wrote this song called ‘At the Beach Every Life,'” she tells ABC Audio. “And I’d been missing home a lot. You know, I grew up 20 minutes from the water, and I’ve always been at the beach all my life. And I was missing that. And that was the first seed of, I guess, this more ‘sea’ theme.”
A few years later Gigi was back in Florida writing new material, armed with a new record deal.
“When it came to the idea of putting an album together, I moved back home and … every now and then there was a song that involved the water,” she recalls.
“And so ‘Sailor Song,’ when I wrote it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this makes so much sense with “At the Beach.”‘ … It started to come together,” Gigi says of what she calls the “overarching” theme for the project.
“I imagine it’s influenced by me being back in Florida, because I have been for a year and I’ve been spending more time by the water,” she says of her aquatic compositions. “But it all really came as a surprise to me.”
Meanwhile, Gigi’s new song “Chemistry,” which she wrote several years ago, is out on Friday.
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