Biography

Teen Idle is the musical moniker of 25-year-old NJ-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sara Abdelbarry. In middle school, Sara was convinced she would become a cardiac surgeon – conveniently, her craft still gets to the heart, just with sound instead of a scalpel. 
 The solo project came to be during Sara's last year of college in NYC, when she was finishing up classes for her degree in English Literature. In July 2018, she challenged herself to write a song every day for a week and then posted them all to Bandcamp. This led her down a songwriting rabbit hole, the goal being to create songs that sounded much bigger than the bedroom they were written in. The project became solidified when, in June of 2020, Sara released Insomniac Dreams, her first EP under the Teen Idle moniker. Much to her surprise, the record ended up charting at #10 on WRSU and remained in the station’s top 30 for 5 weeks straight. Singles from the EP also got airplay on KEXP, DKFM, and KXLU. Her music video for the single "Burning" won Best Music Video at the Stockholm City Film Festival in May 2022. 
 The music is a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Inspired by so many things — from the intricate guitar work and production of Lindsey Buckingham, to the distorted sounds of the ‘80s and ‘90s, to the poeticism of the Arabic literary & music traditions of Sara's heritage — Teen Idle combines pop sensibility with grittiness, lyrical prowess, and a cinematic tendency.