Samia
One afternoon in mid-January, Samia is on the way home from the East Side Portland Brew, her well-documented coffee shop of choice that has become an avatar for Nashville in her folk- and pop-inspired music. In just two years, the 26-year-old has found a base here, building and benefiting from a growing indie rock ’n’ pop scene that’s anchored by women and femme artists who are earning widespread attention in a catchall genre.
“Nashville right now reminds me of coming up in the DIY scene in New York,” Samia tells the Scene, just ahead of her second full album Honey, which is out Friday. “I’m so inspired by the young people here and everything that’s happening in indie music here. I feel really lucky to be adjacent to that. The people are nice. There’s a lot of space. My dog loves it.”
Getting a dog — a really big dog, as Samia notes — and all the responsibilities that come with it can be a welcome benefit of growing up. Samia pinpoints growth as the fundamental theme of Honey. The new batch of songs reflects on the passage of time and the maturity that comes with it, digging into the identity-forming of one’s early 20s. She follows herself from childhood (as heard in “To Me It Was,” which closes with a sample from a home movie shot on VHS) through adolescence in an effort to make sense of whatever is happening next: going to coffee shops, keeping track of legal documents, walking and feeding a large animal. The stories on Honey span relationships, breakups and experimenting with alcohol (something that’s been a smaller part of her life lately), all part of the constant self-reflection that defines her music.
“A lot of the songs are written about a time when I was behaving recklessly,” Samia says. “I really needed the pandemic to sit with myself and understand my behaviors. There’s one song, ‘Honey,’ that’s about drinking every day to distract from the pain of certain situations. With each song, I’m trying to achieve that ephemeral euphoria I had when I was drinking every day — but in a more permanent way, from real true love in my life and permanent elements in my life.”
The album’s spare and elegiac opener, “Kill Her Freak Out,” lays out the stakes of entering adulthood, the willingness to fully feel erratic emotions — even when you’ve got to get them under control to move forward — and finding enough self-worth to sustain your existence. It has been incredibly popular (with more than 1.7 million streams on Spotify alone) since it was released as a single in late September, an auspicious sign for the album.
“Kill Her Freak Out” offers evidence of a growing audience for Samia’s vulnerability, an artistic risk given that the algorithm-happy landscape of the music business can sometimes lead to artists getting reduced to the surface-level traits of their work. Her 2020 debut album The Baby established her as an ascendant force in indie music and featured breakout hit “Big Wheel.”
“I’m so shocked that people like that song,” she says. “Every time we play it, I’m shocked again. I wrote that song in like 15 minutes at 4 a.m. It’s just total stream-of-consciousness, and it’s been an amazing learning experience to see how that has resonated with people.”
The timing of The Baby’s release meant a delay in performing live. While Samia is interested in how audiences respond to different songs, she’s not focusing too hard on numbers. Ahead of her tour, which kicks off Feb. 6 in Asheville, N.C., she has intel on only three other tracks from Honey: “Pink Balloon,” “Sea Lions” and “Mad at Me” all came out in December, bundled with “Kill Her Freak Out” as an EP called Pink Balloon.
“I’m going to lead with what I have, without a lot of data,” she says. “I just have to be really honest about what the record is and what I think of it, not other people’s relationships with it. I’m nervous — it’s going to be a lot more vulnerable. But I’m excited that I’ll be experiencing it alongside everyone else.”
Since coming to Nashville, Samia has spent more time exploring the Southeast. The “Sea Lions” music video was filmed in rural Virginia; she recorded Honey in North Carolina at studios run by Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Heath and Nick Sandborn. She’s spent a fair amount of time in East Tennessee with her boyfriend Briston Maroney, a fellow pop-and-rock songwriter based in Nashville who also has a rising national profile. In 2021, they released side-by-side versions of “Is There Something in the Movies?” The lover’s ballad shows off their vocal sweet spots: Maroney’s range and skill at conveying intense emotion and Samia’s haunting head voice and calming sense of control.
As one of the burgeoning indie-pop scene’s best-known rising talents, Samia has helped coalesce the community that’s growing alongside and in between higher-profile pop, country and rock acts in Nashville. All are trying earnestly to make music that resonates and lasts; all share solidarity in a city struggling for its roots; most seem wary of drinking whiskey. Music City can look forward to Samia’s adopted-hometown stop on March 11, when she closes her tour at Brooklyn Bowl.
