‘Sailor Song’ by Gigi Perez - Lyrics & Meaning

Released independently in July 2024, ‘Sailor Song’ quickly established itself as the biggest song of Gigi Perez's career, with the alt-folk-leaning track surging into the Billboard Hot 100. At the time of writing, ‘Sailor Song’ has leapt to No. 46 - and continues to rise.

The queer-coded themes of ‘Sailor Song’ have drawn praise from various commentators, with Gigi Perez speaking in numerous interviews about the importance of representation.

The warm-hearted track's popularity continues to soar, with ‘Sailor Song’ amassing just shy of 150 million Spotify streams since its release, propelling it into the Top 10 of Spotify's Top 50 USA Chart and the Top 5 of its Viral 50 USA rankings. The success of ‘Sailor Song’ has been aided by the track going viral across TikTok prior to its release, with the lovestruck ode expected to feature on Perez's forthcoming album.

‘Sailor Song’ captures the atmospheric, acoustic-guitar-driven ambience that pervades much of the alt-folk space. The track opens with a chant-like, reverb-laden set of vocals, before Gigi Perez's enchanting voice enters the fray more lucidly alongside the easy strum of a guitar. As she launches into the infectious hook, the composition becomes more built-out, with the introduction of a more empathic guitar riff and an additional injection of energy and vehemence into Perez's delivery.

“I saw her in the rightest way
Looking like Anne Hathaway
Laughing while she hit her pen and coughed, and coughed
And then she came up to my knees
Begging, "Baby, would you please
Do the things you said you'd do to me, to me?"”

‘Sailor Song’ pivots around the narrator's vivid descriptions of her lover, with the ‘Please Be Rude’ crooner portraying her as being as beautiful as Anne Hathaway, before fondly commenting on how she couldn't stop coughing after taking a drag of her vape pen.

The protagonist then recounts how her partner pleaded with her to take things further and display her passionate feelings towards her, as she hints at the start of a romantic encounter.

“Oh, won't you kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor?
And when you get a taste, can you tell me, what's my flavor?
I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior
My mom says that she's worried, but I'm covered in this favor
And when we're getting dirty, I forget all that is wrong
I sleep so I can see you 'cause I hate to wait so long
I sleep so I can see you, and I hate to wait so long”

The narrator begs her partner to kiss her and love her with the fervour and vigour of a sailor. The implication here seems to be that, because sailors spend months on end away from their spouses, when they return they show their love more passionately as a result.

The reference here to her lover being her saviour, rather than God, has stirred up some online hate among religious groups, which Perez addressed via a deeply personal TikTok.

This lyric has been interpreted by various listeners as a veiled dig at the way certain religions chastise homosexuality, but on the other hand, this could simply be a visceral, colourful way of the protagonist describing how she is putting her lover on a pedestal. She concludes the hook by revealing that she cannot wait to go to sleep, because it means she'll get to meet her soulmate again in her dreams.

“She took my fingers to her mouth
The kind of thing that makes you proud
That nothing else had ever worked out, worked out
And lately, I tried other things
But nothing can capture the sting
Of the venom she's gonna spit out right now, oh”

Here, the protagonist adds further details as to the passion and intensity of their love-making, before underlining that nothing else she has tried has made her feel as content as this.

We get a stark image here of her lover spitting out venom, which could be a tie-in with the religious imagery in the chorus. This serpentine lyric could be implying that her lover is being painted as the Devil - who appears in the Bible as a snake - despite her partner not warranting these harsh, cruel depictions. It's worth stressing, though, that this reading may be a step too far into the potential religious undertones of ‘Sailor Song’. It could instead be a way of portraying how she is addicted to her love, but that it is bittersweet and ‘venomous’ because the lovers cannot be as open and candid about how they feel as they would like to be.

“And we can run away to the walls inside your house
I can be the cat, baby, you can be the mouse
And we can laugh off things that we know nothing about
We can go forever or until you wanna sit it out”

As the moving song draws to a close, the narrator yearns to elope with her partner and find sanctuary in their love. Although some weighty themes are explored in ‘Sailor Song’, such as the struggle of female lovers to be accepted by some parts of society, Perez introduces a contrast here. She describes how, if they were allowed to live as they pleased without any religious judgement or criticism from family-members, they could be carefree and laugh about things “they know nothing about”. The protagonist hopes they can do this together until the end of time, but hints at an underlying fear that the other person may not reciprocate these feelings, as she adds in the caveat, “We can go forever or until you wanna sit it out”.

When asked by Billboard about how crucial it is to have queer messaging and visibility on the charts, something Gigi Perez is demonstrating through the meteoric ascent of ‘Sailor Song’, the fast-emerging artist responded, “I think we’re only scratching the surface right now. Representation is so, so important. It’s the thing that gives people the courage and the ability to dream that you can do whatever”.

She expanded, “You, as a person, can take up space. I think there’s an identity part of it, and then there’s just the actual human part of it, and those two things are very important to me. Every queer artist is going to share their story and their identity differently. I’m only one person, and my message is only going to connect [with] and reach the people that it’s meant to. That’s why I think it opens up the bridge [for other artists], and I’m really excited to see everything that’s happening in queer music”.

Delving into the creation of this track, the singer-songwriter mused, “A lot of the process for me is typically just having my guitar and freestyling, and that’s mostly how the songs come - I was in that progression of writing, and I just said, “Kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor.” So, I kept going; I had the chorus done that night”.

Gigi Perez concluded, “It really just stayed as a chorus for a while, and the lyrics had changed. There were certain little words that changed the meaning of what [the song] was. Once I had written the verses, I pulled a melody from another song I had written and put that into this song. It really is one of those things where it was a puzzle putting it together, but there wasn’t much resistance. Other times, in order to get something like that, you have to really dig for it”.

“I saw her in the rightest way
Looking like Anne Hathaway
Laughing while she hit her pen and coughed, and coughed
And then she came up to my knees
Begging, "Baby, would you please
Do the things you said you'd do to me, to me?"

-

Oh, won't you kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor?
And when you get a taste, can you tell me, what's my flavor?
I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior
My mom says that she's worried, but I'm covered in this favor
And when we're getting dirty, I forget all that is wrong
I sleep so I can see you 'cause I hate to wait so long
I sleep so I can see you, and I hate to wait so long

-

She took my fingers to her mouth
The kind of thing that makes you proud
That nothing else had ever worked out, worked out
And lately, I tried other things
But nothing can capture the sting
Of the venom she's gonna spit out right now, oh

-

Oh, won't you kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor?
And when you get a taste, can you tell me, what's my flavor?
I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior
I know that you've been worried, but you're dripping in my favor
And when we're getting dirty, I forget all that is wrong
I sleep so I can see you 'cause I hate to wait so long
I sleep so I can see you, and I hate to wait so long

-

And we can run away to the walls inside your house
I can be the cat, baby, you can be the mouse
And we can laugh off things that we know nothing about
We can go forever or until you wanna sit it out”