Sara Bareilles Says She 'Loved' Revisiting Songs from Her Early Career on New Live Album

When Sara Bareilles recorded her new live album Amidst the Chaos: Live from the Hollywood Bowl during a tour stop at the famed Los Angeles venue in November 2019, she couldn't have predicted just how chaotic the following year would be.

"We were talking about going overseas and taking the tour out on a second run — we had no idea at the time that that would be one of my last live shows for the foreseeable future," the singer-songwriter tells PEOPLE of the COVID-19 shutdown.

Bareilles, 41, first got the idea to record the live album at the Hollywood Bowl while taking a moment to reflect on her career journey.

"On the tour I got the incredible pleasure and privilege of getting to play some of the venues that had been pipe dreams for me as a young artist, especially in Los Angeles, the Hollywood Bowl was one that was like, 'This is it,'" she says. "That was the pinnacle."

"That was the venue I had always had my eye on my whole life," she continues. "I started at coffee shops. I played hundreds and hundreds of shows all over Los Angeles. I was a UCLA student, and I did open mics and all of the small shows. Even as I worked my way up, in the back of my mind, I always wondered if it was even possible. So the first night when I got to headline the Hollywood Bowl, I knew I would never, ever, ever want to forget it. So we made a record."

Though Bareilles originally planned to release the live recording in 2020, everything changed when the pandemic hit. "It started to feel really off-color to do anything self-promotional for myself, so we pressed pause on the album," she says.

Things were delayed even further when Bareilles started production on the new Peacock Original comedy Girls5Eva, which premiered earlier this month.

"Over time, it just landed that this is all coming out at the same time right now," she says. "It's a little bit wild, and I'm definitely like, 'Did I remember to drink water today? Am I sleeping?' I'm not sleeping, but it's a bountiful time, and it's not lost on me what a privilege it is to be able to work at all, especially after going through a whole year where you really couldn't do anything."

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In addition to featuring newer Bareilles songs like "Saint Honesty," Amidst the Chaos: Live from the Hollywood Bowl also includes her beloved classics like "Love Song," "Brave" and "Gravity."

"I always loved dipping back into the songs that emerged at the beginning of my career because I think my perspective has changed so much over the years," Bareilles says. "There's a purity about those songs because they were just writing from this place of pure expression and trying to find my voice at the time. Now, all these years later, I love that 'Gravity' is still a lot of people's favorite song that I've ever written. We've been through a whole lifetime together, practically. I will forever remain really grateful."

To celebrate the album release, Bareilles will have an encore presentation of her livestream performance from the Hollywood Bowl that took place earlier this month. The livestream will air on both her YouTube channel and Facebook page on Friday at 7 p.m. EST. During the performance, Sara and her band perform an abbreviated set of songs from Amidst the Chaos.

Amidst the Chaos: Live from the Hollywood Bowl is available now.