GIGI PEREZ HAS MORE TO SAY

The singer and songwriter, who scored a viral hit last year with 'Sailor Song,' talks religion and the music of her youth

- BY MIKAEL WOOD POP MUSIC CRITIC

JASON ARMOND Los Angeles Times

AMERICAN singer-songwriter Gigi Perez poses for a portrait in September. The 25-year-old Perez broke out last year when "Sailor Song" went viral on TikTok.

Gigi Perez never goes more than a minute or two on her debut album without raising the hair on the back of your neck.

A 25-year-old singer and song writer from the humid sands of South Florida, Perez broke out last year when "Sailor Song," an eerie-sensual emo-folk ballad about longing for a woman who looks like Anne Hathaway, went viral on TikTok. The song, which Perez recorded in her childhood bedroom, topped the U.K. singles chart and inspired covers by Joe Jonas and Tate McRae; today it's been streamed more than 1.4 billion times on Spotify alone.

Yet unlike many viral hitmakers, Perez has proved herself capable of recapturing lightning in a bottle.

Her impressive LP, "At the Beach, in Every Life," showcases the wild beauty of her singing— its crying highs and purring lows — in stark but sturdy songs about love and religion and the grief that descended on Perez when her older sister, Celene, died in 2020 in circumstances she declines to specify.

"Gigi's voice can tear through the atmosphere like a knife," says Hozier, the Irish folk-rock star who recently took Perez on tour as his opening act. He adds that "something of her internal world seems to travel the air with it."

The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Perez started writing songs when she was about 15 and went on to study briefly at Boston's Berklee College of Music; Interscope Records signed her in 2021 but dropped her two years later without having found much success.