By: Alec Sharpe
Most pop singles do not start in an opera hall. Chloe Sarah’s did. Before the seven-single run, before her catalog had drawn well over a hundred thousand streams across her five most-played tracks, she was competing at the World Championships of Performing Arts, the Olympic-style competition that pulls performers from more than 70 countries into one week of judging in front of an industry panel. She came home a Junior Champion in opera.
“Energy,” released July 31 through Da Soul Group, is not an aria. It is not anywhere near one. It is three minutes of upbeat pop with a heavy dance influence, and it is the loosest, least guarded thing she has released.
“I chose the name because the whole song is about that feeling of being completely alive, confident, and unapologetically yourself,” Sarah says. “‘Energy’ felt like the perfect word because it describes not just the sound of the song, but the attitude behind it.”
That attitude is the whole record. She describes it as being about confidence and freedom, about “walking into a room and not feeling like you need anyone’s permission to be yourself.” She was also deliberate about not letting the message turn heavy. “I wanted it to feel empowering without taking itself too seriously, like something that makes you want to turn the volume up, dance, and just have fun.”
The production came from Marc E. Williams, president of Indasoul Entertainment. Williams recorded as M-Doc in the 1990s, signed to RCA and Smash Records, and charted with “Free” and “It’s a Summer Thang” featuring Chantay Savage before turning Indasoul into an artist development operation. He is not a producer who needs the brief explanation twice.
“Working with Marc was a really exciting part of bringing the song to life,” Sarah says. “He understood the kind of energy I wanted the track to have and helped shape the production around that vision. I’m really grateful for his creativity and for everything he brought to the song, as songwriting is really about bringing different ideas together and turning them into something that feels completely right.”
What they built is bright and immediate by design. Sarah wanted the production to carry the same message as the lyric, energetic and confident, without burying the vocal underneath it. “I wanted the production to match the message of the song,” she says. “Energetic, confident, and fun, while still keeping my vocals and personality at the center.”
The song was reverse-engineered from a feeling rather than a hook. “The song started with the idea of creating something that people could genuinely have fun with. Once the concept of ‘Energy’ came together, everything developed around that feeling.” The finished record, she says, should sound like “the feeling you get when you stop overthinking everything and just enjoy the moment.”
The context around it is a catalog that has been building quietly since 2024. “Innocent Crush” opened the account that year. “REIGN,” “GLOW,” and “BEST LIFE” followed through 2025. “FAKE FRIENDS” arrived in 2026 and is now her most-streamed track, with “REIGN” and “Hate To Say Goodbye” sitting behind it in the tens of thousands of plays. More than ten thousand people listen to her in a given month. Those are not stadium numbers, and she is not pretending they are. They are the numbers of an artist compounding, release by release, on her own terms.
What separates “Energy” from the rest of that run is personality. “What I love most is how much personality it has,” Sarah says. “It feels fun, bold, and full of life, and I love that it makes you want to move. I also love how different it feels from some of my previous releases. Every song I put out represents a different part of me, and ‘Energy’ really captures the more confident and playful side of my personality.”
She is not treating it as a finish line. More music and more live performances are already scheduled for the rest of the year, and she is explicit that the goal is range rather than a single lane. “I’m really excited to keep developing my sound and showing different sides of myself as an artist,” she says. “‘Energy’ is definitely not the end of what I have planned for this year.”
For all the talk about dancing, she wants one thing understood about the record. “I’d love people to know that ‘Energy’ is more than just a song to dance to. It’s a reminder to bring your own energy into whatever you do.” She adds that she is still working out where the music takes her, and that the people following along matter to her more than the metrics do. “I’m still growing as an artist and figuring out exactly where my music can take me, and having people come along for that journey means so much to me.”
The instruction, in the end, is simple. “I hope when people hear ‘Energy’, they feel confident enough to turn it up, have fun, and be completely themselves.”
“Energy” is out now. Her catalog is available on her Spotify artist page, and she posts updates on her Instagram page.
