Gigi Perez

Gigi Perez was born Gianna Brielle Perez on February 4, 2000, in Hackensack, New Jersey, to Cuban parents, and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. She attended a Christian school, where she acted in musicals and was later voted homecoming queen.

She started writing songs at fifteen and released early material through the band Wendy Lane in 2018 while still a teenager, later attending Berklee College of Music before leaving during the pandemic. Her older sister, Celene, died in July 2020, and her relationship ended shortly after. She began posting to TikTok to work through the loss, building an online audience with sparse, guitar-led songs recorded simply.

The songs "Celene" and "Sometimes (Backwood)" went viral in 2021 and led to a deal with Interscope Records. Her writing keeps returning to grief, family and religious imagery, sung in a delivery that stays low and close to speech before opening up. Singles from this period included "The Man," about expectations placed on queer relationships, and "Glue," written about clinging to a relationship after bereavement.

She released the EP How to Catch a Falling Knife in 2023, made up of songs written years earlier, and toured supporting Coldplay, Noah Cyrus, D4vd, Girl in Red and Hozier. After leaving Interscope, she kept releasing singles independently, including "Normalcy" and "Please Be Rude."

In July 2024 she released "Sailor Song," an acoustic ballad about a woman who reminded her of Anne Hathaway. It topped the charts in Ireland, Latvia and the United Kingdom, reached the top ten in New Zealand and Norway, and peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, bringing her music to a far wider audience.