Sam is a self-described “Lyric Girly” which is to say she is a writer- she has always written stories and screenplays. Yet as a singer her voice is a vessel for her work and is allowing her message to be spread farther, heard louder, and felt deeper by a larger audience that relates to it. She finds the songs she is most honest on to be the biggest hits and the hardest to write- and Aphrodite is no exception. 

Having blown up on Tik Tok nearly immediately after its January 2024 release, she has received lots of love- as well as her share of unwarranted hate - mostly from older men attempting to “correct her behavior.” However, Sam, no stranger to loud and wrong men, says that she is leaning into their negativity and embracing the backlash. Sam speaks on the double standard in the music industry, “Every song we’ve listened to growing up is really just about sex,” calling attention to artists such as Lady Gaga and Chris Brown, stating her work can and will always be as sensual as she’d like. 

She finds that being vulnerable and raw in her work is cathartic as well as challenging- the EP she is currently working on focuses more on the flip side of empowerment and the basis of why those need to be empowered in the first place and that catalyst to that- has some songs that choke her up in the recording studio. With her singles Aphrodite and Naked, Sam was able to channel a sort of character and disconnect her full emotions from the music to perform. She says she has her work cut out for her with her newer songs- scheduled to be released in spring 2024. 

On February 15th,she released a fresh version of Aphrodite featuring Harmony Tividad, a member of the band Girlpool. This is an artist Sam has always thought was “beyond cool” and “cannot wait for her solo career to blow up”. When asked to close her eyes and imagine a fan listening to her music, Sam pictures them somewhere in Brooklyn, maybe walking through Williamsburg at night or jamming out on the L train- headphones on and the world a million miles away. While she doesn’t write for a particular audience, it was challenging to realize that she doesn’t have to create for others, and that she can make music that she would actually listen to, not just content for the algorithm. 

If Sam were to make a playlist with Aphrodite as the centerpiece, she’d add such artists as Lana Del Ray, Ethel Caine, The Weekend, and The Arctic Monkeys. The playlist’s name, you ask? “UR HOT” all caps, full stop. Sam often relates her energy as an artist as to “that 2014 Tumblr vibe” -

and if forced to create a new account today, her username would be “thatdepressedchick123”- and no, she will not be sharing her old Tumblr username, so don’t ask! 

Sam is both grateful and apprehensive about that era of Tumblr, saying it definitely romanticizes depression, but she missed that community surrounding music that TikTok just cannot recreate. “Tik Tok is a bit cheugy- like Tumblr was a hot girl, kinda dark and brooding, which is closer to who I am and what I want my music to be”. 

When asked about any full-length albums on the horizon, she says hopefully someday, but notes how oversaturated the industry is, “everyone is dropping singles left and right, and I need to have enough of an audience to care about a full album release.”