Sara Bareilles reveals heartbreaking inspiration behind hit 'Gravity'

Gravity was one of Sara Bareilles' hit songs; however, when she wrote it, she was just a teenager.

But she had a motivation at the time, and perhaps a very strong one.

A heartbreak by her high-school boyfriend.

Overwhelmed by the emotions, Bareilles recalls on the Zach Sang Show that she poured them into songwriting.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was just like I have so much ache, and I don’t know where to put it,” she remembered.

“Music was always like the receptacle for that. Music was always the place I would go, even just as a listener, to try to make sense of the world.”

“Then when I started writing, like really writing, like I have written since I was pretty young, but when I really started writing, I could feel that there was some kind of catharsis in that, but that I felt better when there was a way to sort of hold it somehow,” she noted.

Gravity was first released as part of Bareilles' 2004 album Careful Confessions.

Not to mention, the singer has a unique understanding of what music meant to her.

In her view, she is a vessel through which music travels instead of exclusively belonging to her.

“My philosophy is really about music, and I’ve said this before: it’s not mine," she said.

"It’s just like the thing I was like the portal; I was like the available channel that that music was looking for to come through,” Bareilles continued.

“I really believe that we’re just vessels, but I’m so proud of that 18-year-old girl to be open to those big feelings and kind of capture them that way. I think that’s really special," the musician concluded.