Samantha Urbani is the artist behind the debut LP "Showing Up." From her rebellious roots in Mystic, Connecticut, to conquering Brooklyn's DIY scene with Friends in 2010, Samantha's journey is anything but ordinary.
After her old group “Friends” disbanded in 2013, Samantha chose collaboration over solo stardom, joining “Blood Orange” and diving into various projects. Tragedy struck in 2018 with the loss of close friend and producer Sam Mehran, propelling her into a six-month hiatus.
Nick Weiss, aka Nightfeelings, who pulled her back into music and sparked the creative process for "Showing Up."Co-produced by Samantha and Weiss, the album captures her spontaneous spirit. With contributions from friends like Rostam Batmanglij and Stuart Matthewman, it's a celebration of resilience and creative resurgence.
Want do you want people to get out of your new album ‘Showing Up”?
“Showing Up” that just came out is the health and the power of multiple feelings coexisting at once. There are lyrics and movements and music about a lot of really hard things. Heartbreak and alienation and mental health stuff and really close friends and family dying. And all of that is on this album. But on first listen, you might not know because a lot of it has very sick grooves. And a lot of it is quite danceable. And that was all very intentional. Because I think when you mute multiple feelings and truths existing at once is something that is really powerful to embrace. I think I was I went through a lot of hard things before the making of this album.
And for a while I was writing a lot of songs that really sounded sad. And I knew that that wasn't the way that I wanted to present these experiences. I wanted to find a way to make music that felt cathartic and joyful, and connective and energetic, almost like the breakthrough of celebrating survival through those things versus sitting in the pain of those things. I think that you can still honour the pain of those things. Feeling like a breakthrough or a sense of survival. I want this record to be the upbeat companion for anybody who's having a fucking hard time and anybody who's experiencing grief. Anybody who's had a really close friend leave, you know, this this existence. I want the record to be a companion that feels cathartic and feels optimistic, but also is like a witness to those kinds of experiences.
What’s your top advice to songwriters?
First of all, I think that we need to take these titles off of a pedestal, you don't need to think about yourself as an “aspiring songwriter”, or an aspiring artist, you are an artist, you are a songwriter. Trust your instincts, get in touch with that thread of unique insight and perspective that you have versus being a student, of how other people do their thing. I also always tell people not to let what kind of equipment or education, they have access to stop them from getting ideas down. I talk to a lot of people who are like, Oh, I have ideas for songs. But I don't play a lot of instruments. I don't know how to make a demo. I’m not where I want to be as a producer or something.
Don't let those ideas get away, because you think that they need to be represented more professionally or traditionally. I think that making weird little voice memos, kind of like… scrappy demos, in GarageBand, or whatever you have often is way more interesting and more authentic and cool than if you wait and find an engineer or somebody to help you do it in what you might think is the right way.
Don't let a lack of equipment or knowledge stop you from getting ideas down. Or make you think that your ideas aren't real, because you're not like “a real musician”, or there's something. I think a lot of stuff that's done really properly or traditionally can be boring. So yeah, mess around with whatever it is that you have.
Everybody who has an iPhone, or a MacBook has GarageBand on their phone, or laptop. That's actually how I started making demos for my old band. I had a lot of vocal ideas and melodies. I think if I had waited to do it ‘the right way’, I don't know if I would have ever done it. I started just recording all my vocal ideas to drum loops. And I had ideas for baselines, and I would just sing them and pitch them down. And I had ideas for synth lines, and I'd sing them and pitch them up.
I was a college student in a shitty small bedroom in New York doing that, and it turned into a successful band. So I always try to tell people not to look down on their ideas, because they think that they're not like a real musician. What the fuck does that mean? What does it mean? Just make stuff the same way that you can pick up a pencil on a piece of paper and draw. Pick up whatever you have and get your idea down. And if you want to collaborate with other people on it. That's awesome. I think it's like a very fun, cool, strong thing to do to find your collaborators. But it's great to approach them with a representation of what you want to make. So don't be scared to to make things from scratch and do things in your homemade way.
What has been the most rewarding part of my journey so far?
It's crazy, amazing, beautiful when you travel to parts of the world that you've never been to before, and you play a show, and there are people in the audience singing words that you made up in your bedroom. That is an incredible feeling, especially when those people are not only just reciting them back to you, it's like, they're this mirror, where the emotional thing that you were feeling that you put into words is actually something amazing. As a musician or a writer, that's definitely just seeing things translate and feeling that maybe you could do that for people in the same way that your favourite musicians have done that for you throughout your life.
But as far as my music journey at large, I have loved just time going by and getting a little bit older and being able to sort of be like a big sister figure to people who are at the age that I was when I started making music, any kind of like professional sense.People feel they're supposed to be anxious about getting older or time going by but to me, it's something that is so valuable and beautiful and can't be faked. It can't be rushed.
Having a length of experience that continues and grows is so special to me and being able to realise that I want to pursue more avenues than just making music but also working in music as I did a year I worked for an agile at. I worked for a year as an adjunct professor at NYU mentoring songwriting and production students. And now I work as an A&R at Secretly Group, discovering artists, developing artists, helping advocate for artists on the inside of a company like that. Just finding ways that it feels all of my experience matters good and bad. All the bad experiences that I had throughout my 20s I feel I've found a way to channel those things to really mean something for other people.
Sometimes in the moment, when things are either going good or bad, it's hard to see the value in them and it does take time for things to review reveal sort of their, their meaning or their value. Being able to sort of be like a shoulder and a voice of reason and a big sister and a mentor or whatever to people now is so fun and valuable to me. I wish I had somebody like that when I was younger. To be able to be a support system for other people is amazing.
Things you can't live without in your bag.
A notebook. But not a regular notebook. It has to be a notebook that is like a monthly calendar kind of thing for the year because I really don't do well with Google Calendar. Only remember that I have to do things if I break them down. And also lyrics and stuff like that. I think I'm a lot more creative when there's some tactility to my actual writing and you can physically cross things out or you can kind of keep building by adding words to things. I just feel like there's a tactility to words themselves even the sounds that words make and especially as singers, vocalist, lyricist, whatever. There can be a disconnect in the tactility of words, if you're typing them. You can actually feel the shape of words when you're writing out letters in the same way that you can feel the shape of them in your mouth. That makes sense. No, that's crazy.
What else do I like to have in my bag? I also shades because sometimes you need to be incognito. I often, go to coffee places or get food by myself. You have to kind of be in your own little forcefield world. So shades for sure.
My phone? I hate to say it but how else are we going to record voice memos. I did use to have a cassette recorder and maybe that's cooler. I do like to talk about anti social media. It's nice to have mediums of recording that will also distract you with all the other bullshit that's on your phone.
But maybe most importantly; two types of cards, a regular classic deck of cards, and a deck of monopoly deal. I've been playing cards, especially in the morning with another person. It’s a very centering thing that just feels really meditative. I used to use tarot cards a lot, but now I like to play Monopoly deal. I highly recommend it as something that’s slightly escapist, but not as bad as sprawling bad things.