The prevailing mood of The Blessed Unrest by Sara Bareilles, everyone’s favorite “f*** you record labels, I’m not writing love songs” singer-songwriter, is evident simply from the album iconography: foggy and moody New York skylines. The album is heavy with feelings of isolation and being trapped, discontent, and love-lost.

Have I mentioned that this album is pretty sad? Well, it’s really really sad...

That being said, The Blessed Unrest always has been and always will be my favorite album of all time. This album, very literally and figuratively, saved me from myself when I reached my lowest point. Trapped at a suffocating, small international boarding school of 100 people, coming to terms with my sexuality so far from parental or social support, and having a crumbling social network that grew more and more distant with each day, sadness was my high school norm. But something about finding this album, something about the songwriting in particular, made me feel like I wasn’t alone. I was still crying, but I was crying with someone this time. Deeply woven into the very fabric of this album, there is a profound catharsis that comes with listening to a songwriter, like Sara, stew in your misery and take this journey right along with you.

As we are coming up on the album’s third birthday, and on my junior year in college, I felt like re-visiting this album would be the perfect full-circle since cleansing myself of all that turmoil.

1. Brave
   The anthemic lead single, and the most pop-sounding track, was originally written as a love letter to a friend who was struggling with coming out, a sentiment that is definitely salient to, at one point, a confused and depressed high school junior. Originally concerned that she was selling out for a mainstream sound, Bareilles’s message and vocals soar alongside Jack Antonoff and Mark Endert’s production.
2. Chasing the Sun
   More personal, Chasing the Sun’s lyrics focus on a dialogue between life and death. Being set in a cemetery in Queens, Bareilles ruminates on how all of these lives lost serve as the reminder to not give up and keep living. A bit of a cheesy message perhaps when examined so broadly, but the lyricism of the song remains intimate and personal.
3. Hercules
   The beginning of this track serves as reflections on Bareilles's depressed and trapped state. From the harsh, segmented piano notes to even the opening line: “I miss the days my mind would just rest quiet / my imagination hadn’t turned on me yet.” Hercules is a cry for help at its core, and it’s a cry for help that I found myself echoing in sentiment.
4. Manhattan
   A highlight of the album, Manhattan is as melancholic and atmospheric as it is beautifully written. Lamenting a lost relationship with unrelenting sadness, Bareilles has crafted a career highlight with this song. Bareilles notes at live shows that she wrote this song just as she was deciding to move from her longtime home of Los Angeles to New York. Whether you’re leaving your home or your heart is broken, this song is riddled with such painful nostalgia in every muted horn and swell of piano.
5. Satellite Call
   Honestly, Satellite Call is an ode to the outcast, the underdog, the misunderstood. Basically, this song was made to be played at your lowest point and it was made for your typical high school student. In fact, Bareilles confirms this in its lyrics (“This was written for the one to blame / the one who believes they are the cause of chaos in everything”). It’s moody drum kit and the filtered vocals makes the song feel almost transcendent. It is clear that Sara is not only talking to herself during her emotional turmoil, but everyone else who could ever feel the same despair.
6. Little Black Dress
   Easily the most jaunty on the album, Little Black Dress has been my favorite track on the album since my first listens. The song is the sass, the self-realization, and the autonomy that you’re not only wanting from a listener’s standpoint, but from an emotional standpoint as well. This song has always said, “No, I’m going to pick myself up off the ground and get moving.”
7. Cassiopeia
   Lyrically, Cassiopeia is probably the wackiest in this collection. It follows a similar theme to the other Greek mythos-inspired song on the album, Hercules. The song yearns for action, waiting for that contact that breaks your stagnant state. Anyone who has ever felt depression can probably identify with this yearning for change, something to break you free from your own mind.
8. 1000 Times
   This song is just simply tragic. Wanting the unattainable is just a rough thing to come to terms with. But this song delves deeper into the psychology of why we torture ourselves with the unrequited in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way (“Wouldn’t want to tell you no / Nothing could worse than the risk of losing what I don’t have now”). The time that I found this album, this song was relevant to my yearning for people to accept me or like me when it was clear that it was just not their thing, but I kept myself in this position of trying to keep something together that I never had.
9. I Choose You
   In a response to a fan, Bareilles wrote this rare love song . At a show, a fan complained to Sara because even though he and his fiance were fans, they were upset that they couldn’t use any of her music at their wedding because it is all so depressing (her actual response: “Duly noted. You’re not wrong, but f*** you”). With I Choose You not only did she write the sweetest love song ever, but the music video was a montage of two surprise proposals that Bareilles helped organize. Doesn’t leave a dry eye in the house, except for this time it’s not because of soul-crushing emptiness.
10. Eden
    Eden will always hold a special place in my heart because it is literally about setting. It is about paradise warping into a prison right before your eyes (“I think I was choking on the air in Eden / Life in Eden changed”). When you’re a sad kid living in a foreign country, I don’t think that there is a single more resonant sentiment than realizing it is time to leave and return home. The cage door is open and it’s just waiting for you to believe in yourself enough to walk out.
11. Islands
    These last two tracks seem to be the calming backdrop that play the album out in a sense. Very subdued in tempo and production, Islands is a sombre ballad about isolating yourself so that you can understand yourself fully. Although, the song forms this idea of being forced into this isolating cage as opposed to choosing for yourself. However, the bridge warms up to the idea that we still have the future to rely on.
12. December
    “December, you’ve always been a problem child.” Following the vein of Satellite Call, this song is most like a letter to Bareilles and her listener simultaneously. Now, whether December’s personification is based around the concept of a cold and weary winter, or the actual month of December being Bareilles’s birth month is up to your interpretation. Being born in December myself, I’ve always found this song like a comforting embrace from a mother when you’re in the midst of a temper tantrum.

I suppose this article is meant to make you want to listen to this incredible (2014 Grammy Album of the Year nominee) album, but more importantly, to take a look back at that one album that has a similar place in your own heart. Give it a full listen. Just relive all the pain and all the joy that is bottled up in that 60-minute song collection. It'll be worth it.