“I really just wanted to be a pop star, and like the idea of what it means to be a pop star, since I was seven,” and that is exactly what Sara Abdelbarry, musically known as Teen Idle, is well on her way to becoming.
Abdelbarry has been music-obsessed since the young age of seven, and picked up her first instrument at the age of nine. Today, she’s living the childhood dream, with over 700 monthly listeners on Spotify and a chart-topping EP.
But where did the moniker Teen Idle come from? If your first thought was “Teen Idle’ by Marina and the Diamonds, you actually wouldn’t be that far off. “I honestly had never listened to the song, which is kind of funny, but I liked the way it looked. So I was like, if I ever make a band, like this is going to be the name of the band,” she explained.
Teen Idle began as a small addiction to American Idol and MTV Music Video reruns, watching stars like JLO and Gwen Stefani dominate the charts. While music was always a passion for Abdelberry, it didn’t become a reality until she challenged herself to write one song every day, which started the snowball that became Teen Idle.
Abdelbarry may be the face and lead singer of the band, but she is part of every bit of the process, wearing more hats than most as her own songwriter, singer, manager, and producer. She even plays all the instruments in her songs, except for the drums. “I’m a songwriter first and foremost, songwriting is the most precious and tender,” she states.
“But I will say I definitely have a special place in my heart for production. Taking something you wrote on your acoustic guitar into something that is a full rock band production, you know, with me getting to sit down with all those parts by myself and just craft the whole thing, I really do love it.”
Her first EP, Insomniac Dreams, charted at Number 10 on WRSU, the official radio station of Rutgers University, despite being a Fordham University alum. It remained in WRSU’s Top 30 for five straight weeks. Her debut album, Nonfiction, charted nationally across college radio, giving her the confidence to keep moving forward.
Her second album, A Heart So Tender, is set to be released in May of 2026. Abdelbarry’s goal with this new album is to go to places she’s never been before with music. She looks at it as songwriting exercises in genres she’s never written before, like country, and turning it into something all her own. She took inspiration from some of her favorite genres, such as Jazz and classic Arabic, and created the album, A Heart So Tender.
Born in New York to Egyptian parents, the one thing she didn’t want was to forcefully become an “Egyptian” artist.
“Honestly, it took me a really long time to even think of exploring that through my own music, but I think anybody who listens to the new album will see me finally getting to explore that on one of the tracks, and I’m really stoked about it.”
She continues, “I think everything happens when it’s supposed to, you know? I didn’t want to force myself to be like ‘oh, you need to, you’re Egyptian.’ I think I was kind of just waiting for the inspiration to happen, and I’m glad that it did.”
As she continues to promote the release of her sophomore album, Teen Idle joins the Sunday lineup of Asbury Park’s “What a Wonderful Year” Music Festival, a gig she’s been rooting for for the past couple of years.
“I grew up 20 minutes away from Asbury. I took music lessons there, and I feel like, at a really young age, I got to know a lot of the musicians in town because they were my literal music teachers. I felt super immersed in the music scene at like 15,” she reminisced.
“I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be a musician in Asbury, and I think I kind of became obsessed with the idea that eventually I’m gonna come back here when I’m older, have my own band, and play shows.”
The presenters of “What a Wonderful Year,” Telegraph Hill Records, are doing something really cool for the local music community and have been a huge guide and help to Abdelbarry. Additionally, the festival is set to send a percentage of its ticket sales to two non-profit organizations.
“Something like ‘What a Wonderful Year,’ I look at that as kind of the culmination of me, coming back and making it my musical home base, so to speak, the culmination of the effort I put into just building a community here,” she shared.
