SiR’s biggest challenge when performing is to stay present. As he told Rolling Stone’s Delisa Shannon backstage at Lollapalooza, “Every song deserves its respect,” even if he’s no longer the same person he was when he originally wrote it.
“I try to be present through the whole set, which is a very difficult thing to do and a very daunting task,” he continued. “Especially how emotional some of these songs make me. But I think I’ve gotten good at it. First few shows, I broke down.”
The musician even admitted there are a couple of songs he doesn’t like performing, but he still does because they’re fan favorites. SiR said these tracks contained “versions of myself I definitely don’t want to let out,” and after declining to name them, dropped some hints and eventually named the one he dislikes singing live the most: “That’s Why I Love You,” his fraught, emotionally devastating duet with Sabrina Claudio from 2019’s Chasing Summer.
“Sonically, amazing. Feature-wise, amazing. Lyrically, not the song I want to be singing,” SiR said.
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Elsewhere in the interview, SiR spoke about his latest album, Heavy, which dropped in March. He described the album as his “life in a nutshell for the past three years” but acknowledged that those three years were extremely difficult, especially as he battled addiction and got sober.
“I started that playlist in the depths of my addiction, in the depths of depression, in one of the worst places,” SiR said. “Which is funny because some of the best records, man, came from that. But as I healed, as I set myself inside to heal, and focused on myself and my family, I started to see a throughline of light at the end of the tunnel. But so much darkness.”
