Camden singer Sara Barta talks her upcoming album, Save Me, dealing with emotion through music and selling out the O2 Arena

A girl with a suitcase and a guitar. Saba, stage name of Camden singer Sara Barta, has just returned to the UK from Boston, where she is studying songwriting at Berklee College of Music.

The 20-year-old Hungarian-born musician is about to release her debut album, Save Me.

“It revolves around my ex,” says the Barta.

And if you sense some Taylor Swift vibes here, you’d be right.

“I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift since she became popular because my genre is pop country,” Saba explains. “I don’t like her new single, though!”

Dealing with emotions is something that Saba has always processed through her music.

“If I was going through a break-up or ending up in hospital for my panic attacks, I would just sit in a room by myself and write for hours.”

Eating disorders and mental health issues are crucial themes in Saba’s songs.

“Some friends went through bulimia and self-harm, I wrote songs about that,” she says. “If I can help one person, that means the world to me.”

Saba has several early memories related to music while growing up with her parents and grandmother, a classical pianist, in Budapest. The funniest one, which set the start of her career, dates back to when she was only four.

After her parents announced that the whole family was moving to the UK, a very upset Saba immediately ran to the bathroom.

“My dad walked in as he thought I was crying. But I was in front of the mirror, naked, holding a hairbrush and singing some Hungarian nursery rhyme. He asked me what I was doing and I just said ‘I’m singing my sorrows away’.”

She has spent 15 years in London, living in Camden and, now studying music in Boston, is splitting her time between the two.

“I’m a free-spirited, bold human being. I really fit into the whole Camden atmosphere,” she says.

When asked where she sees herself in five years’, she said she doesn’t know yet. What she does know, however, is what her biggest dream would be.

“Selling out Madison Square Garden or the O2 Arena,” she says, only half-joking. “It could be either.”

Saba’s debut album will be out by the end of this year.