Sabreen Islam is no stranger to the spotlight. As a teenager, she published a book of poetry, Spring Clean, before embarking on a path of songwriting and legal studies. Currently at university, Sabreen is also midway through a degree in Law, a subject which is known to be built around structure and evidence, which can be in stark contrast to her writing, which is built more around emotion. Balancing the two sides of herself is all part of a normal day for the young singer.
“They’re two very different entities. I feel like in my first couple of years of my degree, I really struggled to reconcile the more aggressive, logic-based, structural discipline, quite archaic sort of law side of things, with my music, which I felt came way more naturally to me. Over the years, I’ve kind of gotten used to compartmentalising the two. I feel like they exercise very different parts of my brain, and both are important. It’s kind of fun, it’s like code switching almost. When I’m in a legal setting, I’m still myself, but I exercise a different part of my brain compared to the music side. I kind of feel like a double agent. There’s not a lot of crossover, but I will say that law has helped me become a lot more disciplined, and i’ts really helped to sort of refine my writing as well. I think I’ve become a sharper writer after being in the trenches of Auckland Law School.”
Sabreen has been a writer for a long time, with her first book being published in July 2022. But which came first – does Sabreen consider herself to be a musician who is also a writer, or is she a writer who found music?
“I would say I’m a writer first,” says Sabreen. “I think I’m a writer who found music, even though I’ve been writing and doing music for the same amount of time. But writing just comes very naturally to me, and I think that’s why I like doing it across different mediums, so the core of it will always come back to writing.”
The title of the book, Spring Clean, suggests the idea of clearing something out, creating space for something new. “Spring clean came from such a raw, teenage place for me. I wrote it when I was about 16, and I think as a teenager I went through a lot of sort of mental health and relationship struggles. Poetry was a good way for me to flush it out of my system and really be able to hold on to kindness and being good. I think there’s two ways you come out of something really hard – you can either, you know, go on to do that to other people because you went through it, or you can really take the higher road and try to protect other people, because you went through something you don’t want anything else to go through. I struggle to talk about Spring Clean sometimes because I feel like I’m very removed from the place and the person I was when I wrote it, but I’m very proud of it. It was a very cathartic way for me to process what I was going through at that age, and now I look at it as such a time capsule for me.”
The theme of processing emotions and events is something which has continued through into Sabreen’s music as well, but does it come from a place of needing to process, or a place of healing and reflection?
“I think it’s a bit of both. I think while I’m going through something, writing really helps me to articulate how I’m feeling, because I struggle to talk about things sometimes, which is a big theme in Therapy (her latest single). I struggle to open up. Writing is a very sort of, private, controlled place, where I can be as dramatic or as factual and literal as I want to be, and it’s a very safe emotional place for me to process things. But then sometimes, it’s a really nice reflective tool as well. Once you’re on the other side of things, you have a different sort of clarity. It’s valuable for both, but I find myself writing more in the present moment than looking back.”
Balancing the two realms of music and poetry, does one allow her to say something which the other doesn’t, perhaps?
“Sometimes, yeah. I feel like they’ve got different strengths when it comes to emotion. With music, obviously, you don’t just have the lyrics, you have the production and instruments, and you can really create an audio experience of what it sounds like, and I love doing that. But with poetry, I feel because you don’t have the structural limits, or you don’t have to worry about how its going to sound, or how it flows in a melody, there’s a bit more luxury to really splurge on big words and be a little less refined. My favourite poetry is the kind that’s a bit rough around the edges, and you can tell that it’s straight from the author’s heart, where I feel with songwriting you do have to be a bit more precise and careful. I think there’s strengths and weaknesses to both. Poetry, for me, I write my best poems when I really, really just want to get something out. But songwriting, I want to create a moment out of this feeling.”
In her latest release, Therapy, Sabreen sings about the struggle to open up and share her thoughts. But in the process of writing the song, did she learn something about herself that she didn’t realise before?
“I did, yeah. I wrote Therapy during a pretty transformative period of my life. I started uni in lockdown, which was a time, but it meant that making friends at uni was quite delayed. It was only really in my third year of my degree that I had the proper uni experience. I felt a little bit behind, and I met really cool people, but I felt like of like an impostor. I was like, guys, I’m actually not cut out for this at all. I learned in the song that it goes a lot deeper than the surface level. There were things from my teenage years that I hadn’t processed properly, but that doesn’t mean I can’t let new people in, and it doesn’t mean I can’t still have fun.
With Therapy, and it’s something I like to do is take a vulnerable subject matter and really make it fun sounding in the song, because sometimes it really is just so bad it’s funny. It helped me to sort of poke some humour at what I was going through, and I only realised that it’s not actually that serious, and you don’t have to be perfect or completely healed to make new friends, or let people in. Finally, after I wrote that song, I met some of my now best friends, so it was really nice.”
Sabreen describes the writing process as being somewhat selfish, writing purely for herself, but in opening herself up, there is a balance between choosing which parts become part of the song, and which she keeps for herself.
“I definitely think, I learned early in my sort of releasing process, what I wanted to keep to myself and what I wanted to put out there because I think to be a writer in the public eye, you do have to accept that you’re going to have to talk about vulnerable things. But I think for me, keeping it sort of broad and thematic helps me and it protects me rather than getting into like the specifics of what happened to me because I find that when the more specific I get, the more I feel like, I’m commodifying my experience. If I can turn what happened to me into a relatable sort of wider experience, then that both, you know, it elevates my music and that people can actually relate to it, and also protects me as an artist and as a person, because I’m a very private person. I mean, just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean that you need to be a completely open book, right?
Being a proud Bengladeshi Muslim, Sabreen has created music in both languages, with her background playing a large part in helping to shape her creative voice.
“I think it was more subtle at the start, but over the last couple of years, I’ve really made a deliberate effort to incorporate my cultural identity, into my music, and I think my music is richer for it, and I definitely feel more grounded as an artist once I made that choice to not shy away from my background, which I’m very proud of, and to incorporate it into my music. It’s definitely influenced me, and I want it to keep influencing me as I go on.”
Quite often, there can be a pressure which comes from having a multicultural background to be a representative for your culture, which can sometimes create tension between wanting to share your culture and wanting to just be an artist. For Sabreen, she takes this in her stride.
“I love my culture so much that I don’t mind being seen as a representative for it, but I always make it clear to people that I’m not the only one, and I’m not like the perfect Bengali, I’m not the perfect Muslim. I’m just me, and that’s all I can be. I’m very proud to be seen as a Bengladeshi Muslim artist, but I’m far from the spokesperson for my communities. I just sing my little songs and do my thing, so I don’t really see this as pressure. I see it as an honour.”
Often with artists, it’s easy for people to make assumptions, based on their music or their social media, however Sabreen describes herself as being quite shy in her normal life. “As an artist, you do have to put yourself out there and be exposed. The algorithm and social media stuff does not come naturally to me at all to market myself! I had to really let go of the self conscious part of myself. It was like, oh my god, I’m annoying people. I keep telling them that my song is out, and I have to ask for help, and I have to ask for people to listen and support. I really had to let that go. I think that’s also a New Zealand thing, I feel like we’re very hesitant to be like ‘look, I made this, and its cool,’ we have a prescribed nonchalance. I really had to let that go, because I made these songs, and I love them, and I think they’re great. And if I think they’re great, I want people to hear them, and if people are going to hear them, I have to talk about it. So I really had to let the shy part go.”
Sabreen’s journey has definitely been one of reflection, self discovery, and discovering who she is. With that comes the realisation that she deserves to be seen, something which she didn’t believe as a teenager. “I had a lot of visibility when I was a teenager in high school and I hated it. I felt like an impostor. But now as an adult, and the frontal lobe has developed a bit, I really think I have something to say, and I’m not going to get in my own way. I’ll keep saying it, and keep saying it. That’s something which is very unshakeable in me now that I didn’t have back then.”
With music having emerged as being a key way in which Sabreen now shares her voice with the world, which artists is she currently listening to?
“I’ve been loving Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. I’m obsessed with it, it’s so good. And also two New Zealand artists that I’ve been obsessed with are Beth Elsden and Jessica Lee, who are two of my friends and they’re so talented. They both released incredible EPs that I’ve been blasting, so, I’d say those three are definitely go-to listening right now!”
Therapy is out now on most major streaming platforms, with an accompanying music video available below.
