Anderson Cooper Grief Talk Sparks Sara Bareilles’ Unreleased Song ‘Home’ as Podcast Clip Drops
anderson cooper is at the center of a new creative turn from singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, who shared an unreleased track titled “Home” on this week’s episode of All There Is With Anderson Cooper. The song was sparked after Bareilles listened to an earlier conversation between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert, where both men spoke about grief and loss. A clip from the episode features Bareilles playing a snippet with vulnerable lyrics about losing a parent, as the full conversation is set to arrive Thursday, March 19 (ET).
What Bareilles shared on All There Is With Anderson Cooper
Bareilles brought “Home” to the podcast as a song rooted in personal processing, after she said the earlier exchange between Anderson Cooper and Colbert resonated while she was navigating losses in her own life. The track, still unreleased, is presented as part of the podcast community’s first listen, with Bareilles playing a portion of it in the clip.
The lyrics included in the excerpt center on the experience of losing a parent and the way grief compresses time and childhood. Bareilles sings: “I am one day older than my father was/ Than he ever got to be/ I was 10 years old when I grew up/ ‘Cause he died at 53. ”
In the same segment, Bareilles explains what the earlier conversation meant to her emotionally and creatively, telling Anderson Cooper: “I was really moved. I think you say it in the interview: It’s about telling your story, and about telling your story warts and all, is the thing that brings you back home. And I think of home as being a place of connection. Your soul is at peace and at rest when you’re in connection. … For me, on this earth, our work is to find ways to be bold enough to let other people see us. And telling stories is such an important part of that. ”
Immediate reactions: Anderson Cooper describes his first listen
Anderson Cooper offered a candid response in the podcast introduction, describing how he reacted when he heard the song for the first time. He said listeners would hear “Home” on the episode, noting it had not been released yet and that Bareilles wanted the podcast community to hear it first.
He added: “I had not heard it in advance, and I was incredibly moved by it. I’m a little embarrassed about how emotional I got. ”
Quick context: why this song is landing now
“Home” arrives as Bareilles is working on her first full album since the COVID‑19 pandemic, with the unreleased track included as part of that project. In recent years, Bareilles has also coped publicly with the death of close friend and Broadway colleague Gavin Creel, the Tony Award–winning actor and singer who died in September 2024 from a rare and aggressive form of sarcoma, and she honored him at the 2025 Tony Awards.
What’s next for the episode and the unreleased track
The full conversation, including the chance to hear “Home” in the episode itself, is scheduled to drop Thursday, March 19 (ET). For listeners tracking where the song goes from here, the immediate next step is the episode release—while Bareilles continues work on the larger album that includes “Home, ” a track she traced directly back to the grief discussion that began with anderson cooper and Stephen Colbert.
