Sasha Spielberg ’12 is set to release her third album, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” on March 27. But before playing in Tiny Desk Concerts and performing at the Hollywood Bowl, Spielberg, whose stage name is Buzzy Lee, would often play in her dorm on College Hill.
When Spielberg was eight years old, she wrote a letter to her older self to be opened when she turned eighteen. In the letter, she wrote that the only thing she cared about was getting into Brown, having been inspired by her older sister, whose graduation Spielberg attended when she was young.
“I didn’t apply anywhere else,” she recalled. “It was never anywhere else for me.”
In a family of creatives, “music was sort of my thing that I got to hold for myself,” Spielberg said.
Finding her voice in music at Brown helped alleviate the feelings of insecurity and imposter syndrome that Spielberg had when she arrived. During her first few weeks at Brown, Spielberg met a friend who was already making music. The two began making music for fun, and by her third year, they started a band called “Just Friends.”
Spielberg also joined a separate band in her freshman year. “I felt like I really found my footing kind of immediately,” she said.
The summer before her junior year, Spielberg and her brother wrote a song called “Opossum.” The two, whose band name was “Brother Sister” at the time, sent the song to their friends. One of their friends was interning at NPR when one of the show hosts walked by and heard the song, which was originally recorded in GarageBand.
After hearing the song, he decided to make it the song of the day. When the song aired, the two secured a manager. “It really opened doors,” she said.
When Spielberg graduated, she began making music with her brother professionally. She still keeps the same schedule as the one that followed her graduation: she focuses on screenwriting in the first half of the day and producing music from the afternoon until nighttime.
But as she continued touring, Spielberg found herself writing songs that her brother felt didn’t fit the band, which was then renamed to “Wardell.”
She took the songs to her junior year bandmate from Brown, and he said, “‘Why don’t you come to New York for a week and let’s see what is in this little treasure chest,’” Spielberg said. “We opened it up. And then there were about six songs that we recorded, and that was the inception of Buzzy Lee.”
Buzzy Lee’s EP, “Facepaint,” came out in 2018, and she has since released two full albums in 2020 and 2023.
Spielberg recorded her upcoming album, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” at home with her husband, Harry McNally. She described the album as encompassing “a range of different temperatures and styles of songs.”
The album was conceived through the couple’s practice of writing a song “between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.,” Spielberg said. “The rule was we could not look at them for a year.” After a year of following this routine, the couple created 36 pieces, which they whittled down to create “Shoulder to Shoulder.”
“It’s a very special thing to be a genuine fan of your friend’s art,” Justin Kuritzkes ’12, a close friend of Spielberg’s, wrote in an email to The Herald.
“It was obvious in college that Sasha’s singing voice was singular and sophisticated — she’s always had this remarkable control of her instrument, even at a young age,” Kuritzkes wrote.
Rachel Benoit ’12 met Spielberg on the Main Green when Spielberg approached her for help with French because of her French-sounding last name. The two have been friends ever since.
“She was making music and performing from day negative-one at Brown, and we were all instantly like: she’s got it,” Benoit wrote, adding that Spielberg seems just as comfortable performing at the Hollywood Bowl as she did in her dorm.
Benoit wrote that Spielberg now is “the exact same” as she was in college, describing her friend as “a francophile, obsessed with Russian history classes, watching ‘Bridesmaids’ or ‘Elf’ for the one-hundredth time, (and a) vintage clothing shopping aficionado.”
“She would do a little gig in a friend’s dorm room — just her and a guitar singing Janis Joplin or “Brand New Key” by Melanie — and she might as well have been on a concert stage,” Benoit wrote.
“I wish I could do Brown now,” Spielberg said. “It’s my favorite place in the world.”
Rebecca Goodman is a university news senior staff writer covering career and alumni. She is a junior from Cambridge, MA, studying English. Outside of writing, you can find her at the Avon or in the basement of the Rock.
