Teen Idle is the musical moniker of NJ-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sara Abdelbarry. In middle school, Sara was convinced she would become a cardiac surgeon – conveniently, her craft still gets to the heart, just with sound instead of a scalpel. Growing up in an Egyptian-American family, Arabic music was always playing around the house during her childhood, whether on an 8-track or just from her parents and grandparents singing in the kitchen.
Meshing the heartfelt nature of influences like Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham with the grittiness and abrasiveness of grunge and the lovelorn tendency of '60s acts like The Ronettes, Teen Idle makes emotional rock music with a statement (and a cinematic tendency). In 2020, Teen Idle's first EP, Insomniac Dreams, was released on NYC indie label Green Witch Recordings. Sara is set to release her debut LP Nonfiction on indie label H1 Massive, distributed via The Orchard.
How did the band form and what does the band name mean?
Sara Abdelbarry: Teen Idle is a solo project, or call it what you will, that I started in the summer of 2018, when I was going into my last year of college in New York City. I saw that one of my favorite artists challenged herself to write a song every day for a month, inspired by that, I wrote a song every day for a week and put it up on Bandcamp as an album of demos called July. That was the first Teen Idle release. I’ve had the band name in my back pocket since high school and swore that when I started a band it had to be called Teen Idle. The name comes from a song by Marina and the Diamonds, but the funny thing is I hadn’t even listened to the song until last year. I just liked how the name rolled off the tongue.
Previous musical projects? How’d you first get into music?
Teen Idle is the first band I’ve ever started. I used to take music lessons as a kid and teenager and eventually did a music program that was like School of Rock where I was in group music classes with other kids and we’d perform at local venues like the Stone Pony or the Asbury Lanes. I initially became obsessed with music when, in 2nd grade, I’d always bring my CD player with me so I could listen to new pop music on the bus rides to school. The stuff I was into as a kid was Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani, Eminem, whatever was on MTV. Every day when I’d come home from elementary school, back when I still lived in Queens, NY, I’d go to my neighbors house and we’d just watch MTV music videos for hours and hours.
First concert that you ever went to?
Hillary Duff! Somewhere in New Jersey.
What’s your writing process like?
I tend to start with an instrumental, usually guitar or a piano, or even some weird sound I’m playing around with. And then I hum a melody over that and let whatever syllables I sing guide me to writing a melody that fits within that. I’d say more often than not that’s how I write. But there have been songs I’ve written that have started with a line of poetry I wrote in a notebook or a phrase I saw somewhere.
What other artists or songs inspire your music?
I always struggle to answer this because I feel like even the stuff I’ve listened to as a kid that I don’t like anymore has influenced me. The pop punk and pure pop stuff I listened to as a kid has definitely shaped my ear for melody. But in terms of actual songwriting, the reason I wrote my first finished song was because I heard “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac for the first time and was mesmerized by it. From there on out, I feel like I started expanding my musical palette in college.
Artists who excel building a story or world within their songs are definitely my biggest influences. For me, this is artists like Wolf Alice, Japanese Breakfast, Sharon Van Etten, St. Vincent, and the War on Drugs. My time in the jazz band in college also made me heavily influenced by the sounds of Miles Davis and other jazz greats like Stan Getz and João Gilberto. Perhaps not sonically necessarily but definitely in terms of dynamics and structure. There are certain Middle Eastern and North African artists who also mean a lot to me because of my heritage, like Fairuz.
What’s the live experience like and your philosophy on playing live? Do you think the music live should be identical to the recorded version or should it be it’s own thing?
I like this question and think about it often. When I go see a concert, I definitely have the expectation and hope that the artist is going to perform the songs as closely to the record as possible, so that’s something I’ll always try to do live. That being said, a lot of my songs have so many tracks on them that can’t be totally replicated with only 5 musicians on stage, so I pick and choose what the most important ones are.
For songs that have room for improvisation, I definitely try to make them as grand and wild as possible on stage so that everyone has fun. I do like to rock out and just play lead guitar too, so the songs with an extended instrumental outro are the perfect opportunity to experiment and let loose. The shows where we’ve done that have been our best ones yet.
Has the band toured? What has the touring experience been, best shows? Worst shows?
We haven’t toured yet just because life has been busy and touring is expensive and difficult to plan. I don’t know if I’m ready to tour the entire country yet unless some crazy opportunity came up, but I plan to hopefully do seven a small East Coast tour supporting the upcoming record.
What’s up next for the band?
I’m releasing my debut LP this fall at the end of September! It’s an exciting year and I don’t think people will expect a lot of what’s to come. There will be a lot of video content in addition to the music, and I can’t contain the excitement.
Photo Credit Samantha Abdelbarry
