For most people, there’s a mental image stirred up when someone says the word “Emo.” Maybe it’s black eyeliner and skinny jeans. Or maybe you’re more of a purist and the image is a bunch of angsty boys in band tees in the garage. Generally speaking, the vibe is dark and moody.
Sarah Gargano would like to offer a counter-proposal.
Her new project, Paper Girl , lives in the same angry neighborhood as The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball. It’s all power chords, gut-punch lyrics, and melodies that greet you every morning when you wake, completely unbidden. But the packaging is a little different. Instead of tattoos and ripped jeans, it’s pink dresses, pastel vintage art and flowers. It’s an aesthetic that’s much closer to Alice in Wonderland than it is to The Black Parade.
A friend in Nashville handed her a genre tag that stuck: Midwest Tweemo.
“That’s literally brilliant,” Sarah says, laughing. She’s always leaned into the contrast, screaming along to The Front Bottoms’ “we are so cool, we are so punk” while looking nothing like a conventional ‘punk’. “I’ve always liked packaging things in kind of a mismatch way.”
She thought her friend invented the term but when she posted something about it on social media someone told her it was already a genre. Her reaction: “I guess everything’s already a genre.” Fair enough, but if Midwest Tweemo needs a poster child, the 27-year-old Nashville transplant from New York City is the woman for the job.
Paper Girl
Sarah’s been writing and releasing music since she was 18, a spread of sounds that, by her own admission, is kind of all over the place. Paper Girl is a deliberate pivot toward the folk punk and Midwest emo she’s always listened to the most, separated from the pop and country co-writing she does for other artists.
The reasons for the split are practical and personal. On the practical side, Sarah writes with a wide range of artists in Nashville, including country songwriters who, as she puts it, “would probably hate The Front Bottoms.” She doesn’t want someone deciding whether to book a co-write based on her emo project. On the personal side, she’s tired of the way listeners treat singer-songwriters as open diaries.
“I hate the idea of people listening to a song and being like, ‘Oh, is it about this person, this experience she had.’ I want it to be more just about the music,” she says. “At the end of the day, that’s really not what art is.”
The name Paper Girl carried over from her time at Oberlin College, a nickname inspired by the John Green novel Paper Towns, and is a moniker she’s used for other projects.
Made by Paper Girl is a handmade jewelry company Sarah runs as a creative outlet that shows off her crafty side and fits the Tweemo aesthetic perfectly. It was born out of COVID boredom but just kept growing. "Anytime I would wear the jewelry I was making, people would ask if they could buy it from me," she says. "It was too many people asking for me to just casually do it once in a while." She sees it as the perfect complement to a music career. She controls the hours, nobody else is depending on her schedule, and if a tour opportunity comes up, she can pack up the table and go.
The Songs Come From Everywhere
Ask Sarah about her writing process and she’ll tell you there isn’t one. Or rather, there’s a different one every time.
“I have an insane amount of notes in my notes app,” she says. She once woke up from a post-situationship anger dream with the line “I want to date you again so I can cheat on you.” It’s not on the album, but it tells you something about the gritty honesty level she’s working at.
Her influences run wider than the Midwest Tweemo lane might suggest, too. The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball are obvious (she talks about them frequently enough on TikTok that you don’t need an interview to figure that out). But dig a little deeper and the picture gets more interesting.
Taylor Swift is a lifelong favorite, and while Sarah doesn’t think of herself as a pop artist, Swift’s lyric-first approach runs through everything she writes. She’ll also tell you Weezer’s Pinkerton is the “best album of all time.” And then there’s the blueprint.
“She’s the blueprint for me: Avril Lavigne,” Sarah says. She remembers being a fourth grader, listening to Lavigne’s music and feeling completely understood, even though she was nowhere near old enough to be dealing with whatever Avril was singing about. “When I was ten, I was like, she gets me.”
That’s the kind of connection she’s trying to build with Paper Girl, songs that people feel even before they fully relate to.
The Party Was Already Dying Out
Sarah had been sitting on over 30 songs that fit the vibe she was chasing. She posted on her Instagram story, half-asking whether she should cut an EP. Jared Corder, a producer she’d worked with before, saw it and pitched a different idea: come to his studio, see how many songs they could record in three days.
Corder’s studio is about an hour outside Nashville, on a property with animals and an Airstream trailer for guests. Sarah stayed in the Airstream for two nights. She brought her friend Sophie along for the ride (literally - Sarah just got her drivers license a few months ago), and because the two of them are fans of the same music. “I specifically really wanted her to be there because we first bonded over the Front Bottoms and she’s really tuned into that scene.” Sophie hadn’t played drums in eight years, but she ended up playing drums on a track anyway, just because.
On the last day, another friend, Grace Christian, showed up. Grace is a musician who also records with Corder, and one of Sarah's best friends. She recorded background vocals on every single song. None of it was planned.
“Most of the whole thing was pretty unplanned,” Sarah says. One of the 12 songs she chose was written the day before they started recording. Several others had their choruses rewritten at the last minute to fit the Paper Girl sound. The album she walked away with three days later wasn’t the one she went in expecting to make. It was better.
And I can attest to that personally. I’ve been a Paper Girl fan since I came across her TikTok last year, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each new song she’s released since then.
Every song’s relatable too. Here’s a quick one-line rundown:
“Roll With The Punches” | A song about wishing you could be someone who could just go with the flow, even though you know you can’t |
“Buzzkill” | Sometimes good things have to end, and it sure would be nice if people would just turn their music down |
“That’s On Me” | A song about falling too hard for someone who didn’t deserve it and figuring that out just a little too late |
“Something At All” | Life is hard and I’m just too tired. |
“Manchild (Rock-A-Bye)” | Released on Mother's Day weekend, because sometimes your ex becomes someone else's kid to raise |
Sarah added a couple of previously recorded songs to the mix, resulting in a 14 track album, tentatively titled The Party Was Already Dying Out. She sent me a preview link to check out before our interview and I’ll just say that there are even more hits on the horizon. You guys are in for several treats over the next few months.
So when do we get the album?
Sarah’s playing the rollout by ear, which feels right for a project built on spontaneity. The full album will probably land this summer, but she’s not rushing it. She started the Paper Girl TikTok in September of 2025 and she’s using it as a testing ground, posting clips, watching what resonates, letting the audience help shape the release order.
“I’ve been kind of just trying to test things out on TikTok and see the type of feedback I’m getting,” she says, “because a lot of the time with music you make, you really don’t know what people will like the most.”
When I asked her what advice she’d give to an 18-year-old version of herself, she didn’t hesitate: be true to who you are, expect your voice to change, and don’t let people box you in. She was told early and often by music industry people that she was pretty and should leverage that. It took her years to realize that was advice for becoming a pop star, not for making the music she actually wanted to make.
“If someone gives you advice that isn’t sitting right with you, you don’t need to listen.”
Paper Girl has five songs on streaming services now with more coming soon, including her next single "I Think We’re Gonna Miss This" which comes out next week (presave it here). Get ready to use it as the sound for all of your graduation videos on TikTok!
Follow @papergirlmusic on TikTok or Instagram to watch the album take shape in real time.