https://musicauthentic.com/2025/07/13/sarah-herrera-the-21st-century-punk-vs-the-world-in-freefall

Sarah Herrera, the 21st Century Punk vs the World in Freefall

Few artists make my heart beat faster than Sarah Herrera. She is alive, engigmatic, brilliant and fun. Misunderstood. Professional. An anti-star quality. She is among the handful of contemporary artists, musicians who do not comprompise when it comes to integrity, whose authenticity is not corrupted by vanity. Sarah Herrera’s music is not for the casual listeners but those with intent. After all, who needs more background noise in this loud world?

Music Authentic: People often call you a “punk provocateur”—what’s the biggest misconception about your wild stage energy and lyrics, and how do you turn that misunderstanding into fuel for your art?

Sarah Herrera: Yeah, I’ve heard that. I guess probably the biggest misconception is that there’s no difference between my personal and professional life. Yes, Sarah Herrera the musician will stomp on your windpipe if you climb up on stage and be a dick during a show. She’ll write a song called “I Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road”. You ask for an autograph after a show, she’s going to pull out a Sharpie and sign your forehead no matter how hard you struggle. Actually that’s why I switched my boxcutter to my back pocket, had a few accidents, but that’s neither here nor there. But I’m not like that 24/7. I’m not saying it’s an act, it’s not, there are just different aspects to my (and everyone’s) personality. When my boss yells at me, I don’t punch him in the nuts. If my niece comes over to visit and wants me to sing her a song, it’s not going to be about bestiality. I’m going to use the term “being in the public eye” extremely loosely, but there’s a time and place for everything. I’m sure Taylor Swift wouldn’t really like the idea of her fans thinking about the fact that she probably has horrible, painful, loud gut-wrenching diarrhea sometimes, but it’s reality – she does. Everyone is human.

Music Authentic: The punk world can be rough on non-conformists and women; share an entertaining gig story that flips the script, proving why you’re seen as that fun, often-misunderstood force of nature.

Sarah Herrera: Okay, there are very few advantages to being a female in punk, there’s really only two I can think of. One, it’s a little more unique. 95% of punk bands are all male, maybe 2% are all female, and we fall in the 3% or so with what we’re doing. Second advantage – bands don’t always agree on everything. Maybe I think a song should be in E flat, Jimmy thinks it should be in C. Maybe Miguel wants to do a stupid drum solo one night. So we devised a game called “Rock Scissors Punch You In The Groin” to settle our disagreements. Big advantage for me. I mean, it’s not pleasant for me to get punched in my thing, but apparently getting punched in the nuts is way worse. Actually, the one decent instrumental we did was called “Punch You In Yo Thing!”. So, real life bleeds over into art and vice versa, I guess. Either way, it’s pretty funny to see one of my guys rolling on the ground howling; I’m from The Bronx, I can throw a fist or two.

Music Authentic: Balancing a “hump job” with music to stay grounded—how does that realness influence your work, and got any recent absurd or hilarious tales from it that highlight your entertaining side?

Sarah Herrera: This question presupposes the fact that I am in any way grounded, haha. Okay, I got a good one, you’ll have to bear with me though. I know you’ll be expecting some wacky story involving drunkenness or debauchery, but this is really funny and safe for people to be reading in front of their grandchildren or near pregnant women. I love pool, I’ll play it any chance I can, I was one of the top juniors in NYC until music really took over. So last year I went out to play pool in Jersey with two of my friends from the band Yesterday’s Dream. I won’t name the place, but it rhymes with “Billar de Morristown”. So we walked in there, and I’m serious, we were probably the only three white people ever to walk in there (yeah, I’m half Latin, but that’s an ethnicity, not a race). They eye-fucked us from the minute we walked in, just totally staring like we had three heads each. We grabbed a table and five guys pulled up chairs about four feet from the table and sat there with their arms crossed. I have a pretty expensive cue, a Schön custom made, I could probably get $2500 for it on eBay unless someone knew it was previously owned by Sarah Herrera, then I’d probably have to take $1000, haha. I left it in my case, no way I was taking it out in this place, thing would have been in a pawn shop 3 minutes later and me with a knife in my abdomen. So we’re playing, and they’re staring at us, and they are playing the cheesiest salsa music you can imagine, and they’re blasting it. Every song sounded identical, it was terrible. I’m making some pretty sick shots with heavy draw, running out 6-7 balls, and the guys watching are sort of nodding, and I kept winning, and of course winner breaks. And we keep snickering at the music. So I’m about to break, and just at that second, one of the songs ended. I’m lined up to break, and a new song comes on, and my buddy Señor Bonez suddenly yells “ahh, this is my jam!”.

Have I ever laughed so hard in my life? I’m not sure. I missed the cue ball completely, and my break cue went flying across the table. It was five minutes of pretty much solid hysterics, just uncontrollable spasms of laughter. I was missing shots by six inches, and then just intermittent giggles for the rest of the evening. Maybe 30 gangbangers are just staring at me and muttering to each other in Spanish.

I went home that evening and started work on “This Is My Jam!”, which was eventually recorded and released on the album “There May Have Been Others”, and was one of our most streamed songs. You can probably find the lyrics online. We still text each other describing various things as “our jam”.

Music Authentic: With influences spanning underground punk to quirky acts like Sha Na Na, if you could team up with a historical misunderstood artist, who and why—maybe sparking some good vibes in today’s scene?

Sarah Herrera: Well, since you mentioned it, probably Bowzer from Sha Na Na. They didn’t even need a bass player, that’s how low he could go to fill out the rhythm section. We reached out to try to collaborate, but it fell through due to scheduling issues. But they were completely misunderstood. Not many people realize they played Woodstock, albeit with the original lineup, and people were expecting some hippie crap. They came out of the gate with some slammin’ doo wop. Other bands are up there on stage in paisley shirts and headbands, and they’re out there with gold lamé suits. What’s more punk than that? But yeah, Bowzer, he was friggin’ hilarious, and you have to have some humor in your music and persona. Navel-gazing songs about being misunderstood by society or your parents only go so far. Writing hilarious songs about drunk driving may alienate a few people, and I’ve written 7 of them, so I get it – some people just want to hear about stairways to heaven or girls girls girls or whatever. But that’s not the kind of audience I want. I want to really reach the people who are interested in drunk driving but maybe not quite yet sold on it, and give them a little encouragement. It’s my responsibility as an artist.

Music Authentic: As a multilingual artist pulling from Colombian heritage, how does that cultural blend shape your punk identity, especially in a scene that can feel limiting, and what positive twists has it brought?

Sarah Herrera: I did a number of songs in Spanish, none of them were anything special except for “Lo Que Es Tuyo Es Mio” (“What’s Yours Is Mine”). I’m my own harshest critic, but I love the version of that on the live album, that snarl at the end I don’t think I’ve ever quite done before. But actually coming from Latin American heritage has kinda worked to my detriment, especially growing up in The Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing Latin punk bands, Voodoo Glow Skulls and Molotov and all those bands on Ska Core Mafia, but it’s not like there’s a thriving punk scene here. We never got to hone our chops playing in “Battle Of The Bands” contests like my friends in Queens. We were pretty much it, really in all of the North Bronx. Throw in band members with the last names Herrera and Estrada, and people had no idea what to make of us. We’d play a small free show when we were in high school and people kept waiting for me to put down the bass and pull out a turntable and start scratching. Probably would have gotten more gigs if I had worn a backwards baseball cap and called myself MC Sarah. I guess wearing blackface would have been a little much.

Music Authentic: Your lyrics draw from personal mayhem, like in “The Ungodly Document”—what’s a wild, unexpected inspiration lately that might surprise folks and show your fun, human side?

Sarah Herrera: I guess my fun, human side would probably include the road rage that I have taken to a really high level. I’m not talking about just a middle finger out the window, that’s for amateurs. Some guy gets too close to me, I’ll just drift down to 10 miles an hour and even just stop. Someone pulls up next to me to start yelling and gesturing, I hit the side of his car with a penny I bent in half with a pair of pliers – I’ve got around 50 of them in my ashtray. Touch up paint never matches exactly. I’ll tell you how to really mete out some justice – follow the guy until he parks, wait a few minutes, and then put an M80 in his tailpipe. You can just push it in there with coathanger. Next time he’s out, after 20 minutes, the muffler heats up and boom! I guess I’d feel kind of bad if he swerved into a busload of kids, but these things happen, certainly not my fault.

Music Authentic: Since pulling your music from Spotify back in April, how has that bold move shifted your day-to-day as a musician, and have there been any surprisingly positive ways it’s connected you deeper with fans?

Sarah Herrera: To tell you the truth, no. I’ve long held a theory, it’s very complicated, so I hope anyone reading this will be able to understand the nuances, but it is as follows: “people are lazy”. People who used to listen to my music will go on to my or one of my bands’ artist profiles on there, see that the music is gone but is available for free now elsewhere, and just click on “discover artists like Sarah Herrera”. And then they’ll end up listening to whatever awful rapper the algorithm recommends. Don’t want to go off on a huge rant about how lazy people have become, and why, but I have a few suspects. Think of how many people you know who spend hours scrolling down Instagram and just leaving a fire emoji on stuff they don’t read. Someone sends me an email, I read it. Podcast gets sent my way, I listen to it. Eviction notice by registered mail? I read that too, just out of courtesy to the sender. Too many people believe they are starring in their own movie, and everyone else is just a peripheral character. It’s anti-humanist.

But if I’m filling out a form somewhere and I’m dumb enough to put down musician under occupation, I’ll sometimes get someone looking up and saying “hey, let me check you out, are you on Spotify?”. I answer no. And that’s usually the end of the conversation. Do I regret my decision? Not for a minute. Did it work out the way I wanted it to? Not quite. Maybe I subconsciously expected Apple Music to reach out and say “hey, Sarah, please come back, this place isn’t the same without you”.

Music Authentic: Reflecting on your path from bands like vomitsemen and Pancreatic Cancer to solo chaos, what’s a defining moment that captures your unapologetically raw punk spirit?

Sarah Herrera: Well, I suppose if you ask most people (or the Internet), it was April 18, 2025. I’m not sure this is the right answer, but I’ll knuckle under to the conventional wisdom here. So I’m sure you know this, and many of your readers as well, but maybe a few people don’t know this – this major streaming services don’t take direct submissions. There are like a dozen authorized whatevers, CD Baby, DistroKid, etc. and you submit the music to them. They check it out, make sure it’s marked as explicit if it needs to be, check that you’re not uploading a song at 64 Mbps, that you’re not trying to pass off a downloaded Metallica song as your own work, that kind of stuff. They do their internal review, and then pass everything off to the paid streaming services, who do their own review which I think is a bit more cursory. The live album was uploaded by my label, Insurrectionary Records NYC a few days earlier, and was set to go live at 10 AM on the 18th, and it did. The label head uses the same email and password for everything. At 10:20, I logged in. I looked at our catalog, all the albums and singles by myself and with my two bands. No screenshots, no tears in my eye. The whole thing felt very disconnected. I went down the list and checked the box next to every single release. I scrolled up, and clicked “Takedown All Stores”. And waited for the metaphorical shit to hit the fan. And it hit hard. Incidentally, please stop saying “proverbial” when it should be “metaphorical”, that drives me nuts. There is no actual proverb about shit hitting fans.

There was a second, more minor reason for this that I haven’t discussed before, but it’s worth discussing. We got botted heavily and repeatedly. Spotify is worse than the Gestapo, it’s a huge problem, you can find people complaining all over discussion boards, Reddit, Quora, etc. I had the Spotify for Artists app, that tells you in real time how many people are listening to your music. Never got above 35 or 40 in all the time we were on there. Then one day I checked and saw that 400 people were listening. Huh. That’s weird.

Week later, got an e-mail from the music distributor. Illegal streaming. By me, apparently. Warning and $10 fine (Spotify fines them and they are kind enough to pass that gift on to me). Label doesn’t pay that, that’s out of my pocket. Well, ok, one time anomaly probably. Some time passed, I checked Spotify for Artists again on the subway. 12 people listening. Dropped to 10. Went up to 16. And then up to 350. Crap. Another e-mail, another fine – there’s no second warning – that single was removed from all platforms. Time for customer support (I’ll paraphrase):

Me: Look, we didn’t do what you’re accusing us of, and frankly …
Distributor: Fuck you
Me: We are trying to make it on our own merits, we don’t even care about streaming numb …
Distributor: Fuck you
Me: We’re not even monetized on Spotify, you can see that in your system. What reason would we have to artificially stream, even if we actually knew …
Distributor: Fuck you.
Me: Look, what recourse do we have?
Distributor: Well, you can go fuck yourself, I suppose

They followed up with an e-mail saying “don’t contact us again on this matter”.

A few weeks later, over 50 songs were botted. $520 hit on my credit card that I forgot I had put on file, because we weren’t monetized and I never thought about royalties or anything, just slipped my mind that it was on there. So if there’s an enduring legacy to my music, it’s going to be the 18% interest accruing for the next 30 years on a stupid fine that I can’t pay off.

And you thought those record labels in the 50’s and 60’s were predatory.

Music Authentic: You’ve shared openly about challenges like dyslexia and substance stuff—how have they built your resilience, and what uplifting advice would you offer indie artists facing similar hurdles to keep pushing forward?

Sarah Herrera: Well, starting with substance abuse, by all means – push forward! Don’t drink one bottle of Jager, drink three! No, I’m joking. Yeah, drugs and alcohol are fun when you’re 11, 12, 13 – I don’t feel like counting up, but let’s say early 20’s. If you’re performing in front of people, they’re wonderful. And without being, shall we say altered, my songs probably would have been boring as shit. But, I can’t sit here at the age of 25 (26 later this month!) pretending that my life hasn’t started yet. It has. My life is roughly one-third over. Maybe more. So yeah, I can yell out the window and my guy will throw up a few ounces of coke, and I’ll lose three days and people will trash my apartment and put out cigarettes on my dog, I’ll wake up in the morning with people having sex 6 inches from my face, et cetera. Eventually you have to wonder how sustainable this sort of lifestyle is. Don’t get me wrong, I still can and will and do party with the best of them. But what comes next? Do you want to be doing this at 50? Or do you want to grow as a person.

Dyslexia is just a pain in the ass. So, if you haven’t noticed, and you can certainly try it out now: when you read, you aren’t reading one word at a time, you’re really reading in chunks, kind of glancing over groups of words. Your eyeballs do not move from one word to the next to the next. I mean, you’re reading this right now, so perfect time to see what I’m talking about. See, I told you. I can’t do that, I can see one word and the others are kinda floaty. There are shortcuts – for instance, if we are playing the song “I Know They’re Not Felt They’re Silk I Felt Silk And I Felt Felt I Felt More Silk Than I Felt Felt”, I obviously abbreviate on the set list that’s by my feet. Reading has to be done slowly. Sometimes I speak slowly and deliberately, just because dyslexia is a cognitive condition, not strictly a reading disorder. Kinda wish there was more awareness, but whatever – one battle at a time.

Music Authentic: Peering ahead, what’s brewing for you—new industry protests, solo vibes, or ways to shake things up while spreading positive energy? And any suggestions for upcoming artists on staying true amid future challenges like AI or streaming dominance?

Sarah Herrera: What’s brewing for me? I have a few options. I can go back to making music, but I’m kind of sick of having to eat cat food. I can stay at my current job and die a slow, horrible death on the inside until my eyes are blank and vacuous. I can head out to L.A. and maybe get into porn. I can fake my own death and move to Costa Rica and be a bellhop at a resort hotel. You pick for me.

I don’t like using the term AI, because I’m not sure it even exists. There are a few reasons for this. For one, there is no accepted widespread definition, not even close, which makes the term practically meaningless. Also, a major component of intelligence is self-awareness, and that will never truly happen with technology. Third, pattern recognition and prediction, no matter how sophisticated, is not intelligence. So, artificial? Not really. Intelligence? Not really either.

Anyway, here’s what’s going to happen. Eventually, a lot of musicians, journalists and artists will be replaced. The little guy is going to get fucked, as usual. Who else is going to be replaced? How about social workers? Doctors? Lawyers? Airplane pilots? Nobody knows. Every innovation that comes along, say from a small startup, will be bought up by big tech companies. Nothing will be regulated, at least in this country. As someone who adheres pretty strongly to socialist principles, I’m concerned primarily about the struggles of the working class and a drastic increase in income inequality. That is, without question, going to happen. So yeah, not a fan.

My thoughts on Spotify? I have none left.

Listen and follow Sarah Herrera. Find the way, she is not on Shite-o-fy. If you are lucky you’ll find those days when some of her songs are available on YouTube. I never regretted waiting to hear more of her songs. Oh, and don’t follow her on the streets, that’s not what I meant…