Words by Hannah Mylrea
To say we’ve caught Gigi Perez at a busy time is an understatement. When she hops on a call with NME a few days after her The Cover photoshoot in Venice Beach, she’s still in Los Angeles preparing for her latest appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. When it airs later in the week, she performs a rousing rendition of ‘Please Be Rude’, a yearning slow burn of an indie-folk song given a rocked-up full-band treatment for late night telly. Her hectic schedule then allows for two days at home in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, before she heads to New York for the MTV VMAs, where she’s up for three awards. Once the ceremony’s over, she’s still got plenty to keep her occupied ahead, with more tour dates on the horizon.
This jam-packed calendar is par for the course for Perez in 2025. It’s already been a mega year for the 25-year-old, who has toured with Hozier, held her own headline shows and lit up festival stages. In April, she released her stellar debut album ‘At The Beach, In Every Life’ and continues to see her viral UK Number One single ‘Sailor Song’ soar, both online and as a key moment at her gigs, over a year after its release. As she succinctly sums things up when reflecting on recent months: “[I’m] in a very mentally and physically engaging time right now.”
It’s no surprise she’s booked and busy, though. Perez is an artist whose deeply moving songwriting captivates. Honest explorations of grief, love, sexuality, relationships and religion are spun over a folk-laced sonic palette that pulls from early Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers and long-time inspiration Alex G. Her powerful pen has established Perez as an essential young voice, and won over an impressive fanbase in the process; and the incisive nature of her music shines through as she talks with NME, Perez thoughtful and open in her answers.
To feel the impact her songs are having, you only need to look at footage from Perez’s performance supporting Noah Kahan at this year’s BST Festival in London’s Hyde Park, where thousands of audience members belted back the words to ‘Sailor Song’. It’s a goosebump-raising moment, the song’s popularity and mass sing-along evoking similar moments around hits like Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’. “I just remember being so in awe of it, and it took me a second to really process it,” says Perez of the experience with a smile. “That was one of the best days of my life. For sure.”
While it’s easy to paint Perez with an overnight success narrative, the singer-songwriter has been honing her skills for years. Born in New Jersey, and raised in Florida, she grew up surrounded by music and singing in choirs and appearing in plays. Despite this, the young Perez hadn’t considered becoming a musician as her path. “My older sister, she was the opera singer,” she explains. “That was always in my mind, like that was what she was going to do, and I loved to watch her.”
Perez was brought up in an incredibly religious household; but in her teens she “really, really struggled a lot” with her faith, particularly in relation to accepting part of her identity as a lesbian. “I was always fighting my sexuality between what the Bible, the New King James Version, says, and that interpretation of it,” she shares.
“My success comes down to the connection that I share with others”
Her relationship with religion was also complicated by the grief she felt after the deaths of several family members, including her older sister Celene in 2020. “Something happened after my sister passed away, where my issues with Christianity and its doctrine was so different from anything about being gay,” she tells NME honestly. “It became about the fundamentals, and not about ‘I am doing something wrong, and maybe one day I’ll repent’.”
Around the same time Perez was trying to reconcile her religion with her identity and experiences, she discovered songwriting. She briefly attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music before dropping out during the pandemic. In 2021, she scored early viral success with ‘Sometimes (Backwood)’, a poignant cut of stripped-back indie folk that sees her vocals soar over soft acoustic guitar, which led to her first major label deal. After a handful of singles, she would exit the deal, but soon found a new home for her music with Island Records.
“That period of time was so important to me, and was so formative [in] allowing me to experience [what] otherwise feels like a very deep failure as an artist to be in that position,” she reflects now. “The best part about it is nothing happened. I woke up the next day, I had air in my lungs, and I got to ride my bike, and I got to be around my family. That is the ultimate blessing.”
That experience has shaped how Perez views the success she’s achieved since. The glitzy award shows and national TV appearances might be fun, and she’s “aware of the privilege and the blessing it is to live this version of my life”, but they’re not what’s most important in her story as an artist. “The only thing that truly stands is connection, and that’s connection to the person next to you,” she says. “My success, for me… it comes down to the connection that I share with others.”
Perez has built that connection through her candid and sincere songwriting. ‘Sailor Song’ – which has over 1billion streams on Spotify – is a dissection of sexuality and shame, and the latter’s impact on a relationship. The poignant ‘Twister’ – which draws influence from Alex G, and the messages and allegories of Wicked – muses on traditional ideas of good and evil, as well as Perez’s own relationship with religion.
“I’m a fan of music before I’m a songwriter or an artist”
Meanwhile, on ‘Sugar Water’, a track that musically evokes Bon Iver’s ‘Flume’ or Sufjan Stevens’ ‘To Be Alone With You’, Perez explores sisterhood in a deeply affecting way, centred around her relationship with Celene as well as younger sister, Bella. “I think a lot of the other songs about grief tend to just be sad, in the sense of my longing for my sister,” Perez explains. “But with ‘Sugar Water’, I think I captured the memory of the beauty that we had as kids and the innocence and how much it hurts to lose that innocence and want that innocence back.” It viscerally paints a picture of a childhood spent on trampolines and lying under trees, and of the death of Perez’s pet rabbit.
“That was the first time I really felt this yearning for something,” she contemplates. “I was so young when that happened, too, and then also experiencing it with co-historians like my sisters. For those people that have siblings that are closer in age [and] you’re all girls, it’s very beautiful. Your relationships can be very messy, but it doesn’t change the love and the joy that you have for each other, because you guys are experiencing the world at the same time.” ‘Sugar Water’ captures the complexities of sisterly relationships that you can only witness when you’re within them. On tour, the emotive heart of the song beats louder as Perez’s younger sister, Bella, sometimes joins her onstage to perform it.
Perez’s time on the road has been marked by deep chats with Hozier, ones that align with some of the topics that both artists’ songwriting tackles. “I think the last conversation we had was less so [about] music, and more so just talking about questions of faith and deconstruction,” she explains. “As soon as I got off the stage [in Summerfest, Milwaukee, we] just plunged into that conversation. He sent me this poem that has really stuck with me since, and I go back to it sometimes.” The poem is Baron Brooke Fulke Greville’s ‘Chorus Sacerdotum’, from his play The Tragedy Of Mustapha, which in part touches on the inherent hypocrisy of religion..
Hozier’s live performances are a hugely powerful thing, not least because of the impassioned speeches he often gives. At Reading Festival last month, he warned the crowd against taking their rights for granted, reminding them of the past battles that were fought to secure them, and called for statehood for Palestine and the end of violence in the region.
“[I’m] aware of the privilege and the blessing it is to live this version of my life”
“I’ve never seen an artist dedicate themselves so fully to using their voice and their platform for the just thing,” Perez says of her tourmate. “Ranging from his personal experiences and his own history with Irish civil rights, tying that into American civil rights, all the way to trans and LGBTQ [rights], [and] the occupation of Palestine… It’s just so many different aspects of addressing worldwide oppression.”
Hearing those speeches night after night has had a big impact on Perez: “At this point in my career, seeing something like that is something that’s going to stay with me forever, and I believe has already shaped the character of what kind of person I want to be in this world.”
As Perez continues to grow into the artist she wants to be – one who uses their platform, builds a community, all while creating music that truly resonates with an audience – she’s also excited to see where she could go musically. “I’m very interested to see what I’m going to be pulled towards, because I haven’t worked on any solo work since I put out the album,” she says, adding with a grin: “I have some things that I’m sitting on that are a little… experimental.” While she doesn’t name names, she also hints she’s been working with some “incredible artists”, so there’ll be “some exciting things before the end of the year”.
For now, though, it’s back on the road, where the songs from ‘At The Beach, In Every Life’ shine on stage. “The growth of the live [side] for me, and my live performances has been just enormous, and I’ve seen it, and I’ve felt it on stage,” she reflects. She’s not the only one, as evidenced by her ever-growing fanbase and the impassioned way they sing her whole set, but particularly ‘Sailor Song’, back to her. “It’s such a beautiful way to end the night right now, because it really grounds me back into what’s gotten me to this place,” she says, noting it’s a “very sweet experience” that’s shown her “what the community around it has been been [and] what it can be for others”.
Ultimately, it all comes back to that connection and catharsis she’s able to create with her music. “I’m a fan of music before I’m a songwriter or an artist, so I know what those songs feel like in my life,” she shares. “It’s a very great honour that I don’t take lightly.”
Gigi Perez’s ‘At The Beach, In Every Life’ is out now via Island Records.
Listen to Gigi Perez’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Hannah Mylrea
Photography: Aubree Estrella
Styling: Lissette Perez
Glam: Joanna Klein
Label: Island Records