Sasha Sloan
Photography by Nicolita Bradley and Noonie Bao. Interview by Heather Hawke
Sasha Sloan’s first musical memory is performing a song she wrote for a talent show at the age of ten. She had grown up singing, but that was the first time she performed an original. “Granted it was awful, but people were so nice it encouraged me to keep writing,” she says. She felt truly inspired with the first song she ever wrote – “Pitter Patter” – she recalls that it was when she had finally learned some chords that she wrote the track, stating “It’s probably the most hilarious thing you’ll never hear.”
Sasha grew up in South Boston for the first half of her childhood before moving to the suburb of Hopkinton outside the city. Her mom and dad split up when she was still a baby and both were remarried a few years later. She felt the strains with her dad when he moved away to Pennsylvania when she was around the age of 11, “[It] was really hard for me. We have a complicated relationship and I think a lot of that has inspired my writing.”
Creativity has always been a part of her life and she recalls that she first got into music by a karaoke machine at the age of 5, “I was glued to the thing!” she states. She began taking piano lessons on and off and soon started writing her own songs after learning to play chords. “I know a decent amount of theory, but I’ve always been reliant on my ear rather than technicalities.” After taking chorus in high school she went to Berklee College of Music for a year before setting her sights on Los Angeles.
When in Los Angeles she began to write and appear on tracks alongside some of today’s top artists including Kygo, Odesza, King Henry, and she even wrote Camila Cabello’s newest single, “Never Be The Same.” She’s also worked with Troye Sivan, Diplo, Noah Cyrus, Tinashe, and Dua Lipa to name a few.
Although she is a songwriter Sasha states that writing definitely doesn’t come easy to her, “When I connect with a song emotionally it can be really draining but also very fulfilling. It gives me a different kind of high when I write something I love.” One of the biggest hardships that’s helped incite her writing is her self-esteem, stating “I’ve always been really insecure and I think it’s inspired a lot of material.”
Her debut single “Ready Yet” was only released last October and has since amassed over 8.9 million streams on Spotify. Proceeding “Ready Yet” she released five additional singles; “Runaway” in December, “Normal” and “Fall” in February, and just last Friday she released “Here” and “Hurt.”
When Sasha first started releasing music she asked her friend Noonie Bao to take a few photos of her just hanging out to make the visuals “as real as possible.” Although she has used a few people to help out with all of the artwork Sasha’s super hands on and has been really involved in every image that’s come out. Speaking on her press photos she says that after trying a couple high glam photo shoots she felt weird because she didn’t look like that in real life; “I want everything to feel like you could be there with me, but mostly I just want to create emotion.”
She’s fresh off her first tour supporting Joywave and is expected to release her debut EP in the coming months.
https://www.instagram.com/sadgirlsloan/
https://twitter.com/sadgirlsloan
https://www.facebook.com/sadgirlsloan/
