Biography
Sarah Kinsley (born in Mountain View, California, on 18 July 2000) is an American alt-pop singer-songwriter of Chinese-American descent. After her song "The King" had success on TikTok in 2021, she released an extended play (EP) of the same name, which was listed on NME's list of top debut projects of 2021. Kinsley followed up the project with subsequent EPs, Cypress (2022) and Ascension (2023). In 2024, she released her debut album Escaper.
Shortly after being born, she moved with her family to the US east coast and settled in Connecticut. While growing up Kinsley spent her time training in classical piano and violin. She took part in performing in youth orchestras. As Kinsley once said regarding music in her youth," it was just everything. It was always there. I think that was part of the reason why I had to do music, in some form. At some point, it just became inseparable from life."
She spent her teen years posting covers of popular artists' music like Justin Bieber and Julia Michaels. Kinsley then took on studying in Singapore until she was contacted by a former classmate, Luc Bradford, that went by the producer name Ford. He had seen her music covers online and was impressed to say the least. Ford looked to make a song with Sarah and ultimately they created the song Craving. This was something Kinsley was proud of so she started sending it to what she'd describe as her good music industry contacts. She received some conflicting comments where these contacts focused on how small a part she played in the song itself. This kickstarted her interest in becoming her very own music producer.
While studying music theory at Columbia University Kinsley learned that only 2% of producers identify as women. So when she was assigned a project to produce and record several songs she took to it and submitted a song titled Over+Under. Suffice to say she did well in that class. During her time at Columbia University Sarah details the male dominated environment she needed to navigate while learning. Sarah calls out the music industry in saying that it needs to recognize and empower female producers like herself.
After one of the snippets of a song she was writing went viral on TikTok she was ready to release her second EP titled after the viral sensation, The King. Kinsley toured North America to support her EP release, Cypress.
In 2021, Kinsley released the extended play (EP) The King, the title track of which went viral on TikTok.
Subsequent EPs include Cypress (2022) and Ascension (2023).
In 2024, she released her debut album Escaper.
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