Gigi Perez’s new single “Sailor Song” became a Billboard hit overnight, but not without some controversy from religious individuals.
After a stripped back, acoustic clip of her track “Sailor Song” went viral this past spring, Gigi Perez, a musician who has mostly found acclaim through her following on TikTok, saw overnight fame.
Perez isn’t new to the music game, having released the popular track “Sometimes (Backwoods)” in 2021 as well as singles “Normalcy” and “Please Be Rude” in March and May respectively. After the great success of “Sometimes (Backwoods),” Perez found herself signed to music label Interscope Records, but this pairing didn’t last very long as she was later dropped for not producing music at a rapid enough rate.
“I was stuck inside of a machine that didn’t work for me and I was unhappy,” Perez said about her time under her former label.
“Normalcy” and “Please Be Rude” were then released independently, but following the success of the recent release of her track “Sailor Song,” Perez has signed a new deal with Island Records.
One of the original few clips released of “Sailor Song,” uploaded to TikTok on July 5, has nearly 4 million views and over 480,000 likes. Furthermore, while there are various TikTok audios attached to the song, the top five attributed to Perez herself have a combined 500,000 plus videos posted underneath them. Within a day of its July 26 release date, the song had skyrocketed to Spotify’s Top 100 Trending tracks list.
But following the introduction of the full track to the rest of the world, some listeners were quick to denounce Perez for one lyric in particular. The line “I don’t believe in God, but I believe that you’re my saviour,” a lyric that is referencing Perez’s lover, has caused a stir of upset among a few religious communities.
“When I accidently read the part ‘I don’t believe in God but I believe that your my saviour’ either I [go] quiet or [sing] ‘I do believe in God and I believe that your my saviour,” one commenter said under a TikTok posted about the song.
Another person responded to the video asking, “What if I still sing the song but I just say, ‘I do believe in God and I believe that he’s my saviour’ instead of the real version?”
Fans of Perez pointed out how disrespectful this was to the creator of the song as she had written the track around themes of religious trauma and queer female relationships. This furthered the controversy around the song, with some people saying that because of this line, Perez must worship the devil.
Perez recently responded to this public dispute by uploading a clip of a new song she had written which fans have taken to calling “Love was the Law.” The name comes from the very few lyrics Perez has posted, which read: “Capital loss / Love was the law / And religion was taught.” This song seems to hit back at those who have treated “Sailor Song” as being a devotional to Satan, and not what it really is, a song about absolute, all-consuming love.