Never Let Me Go, by contrast, was inspired by new beginnings.
“The last couple of years took their toll on me like they did on all of us, but they also gave me a lot to be thankful for. It still feels like a small miracle that anyone cared about my music while we were all going through this pretty bleak time,” Sam says with a touch of Swiss understatement.
When his music started to make waves, Sam was stranded in Switzerland for the first time since his teens. Still, he didn’t hesitate to meet the moment, and so began a period of professional recognition and personal upheaval or, in Sam’s own words: “I didn’t sleep for a year.” Then came the biggest plot twist of the whole dizzying series, according to Sam: he fell in love.
“You couldn’t make this sh*t up,” he chuckles, describing the experience as seeing “actual light” again at the end of the proverbial tunnel for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic. “When it became clear that I wouldn’t be going back to New York anytime soon, my whole world felt like it was going to end. It didn’t, fortunately. It just started over. And it’s been getting bigger ever since.” The flying sparks ignited Sam’s creative engine, too, and before long, he had an LP’s worth of new songs on his hands, each in its own way inspired by the fragile promise of having something to lose again – or someone.
To record his new material, Sam Himself rejoined forces with his longtime creative partner and ‘Second Beatle,’ New York City-based producer and engineer Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop; The War on Drugs). The pair managed to record most of Power Ballads remotely, exchanging home recordings while Sam was stuck in exile.
Fast forward to early 2022 and Sam is back at Strange Weather, Schlett’s Brooklyn studio and the artist’s creative homebase. Now, the two are joined by Sam’s close friend and live band bassist, Josh Werner (CoCo Rosie; Ghostface Killah) and, for the first time, drummer Chris Egan (Blood Orange; Solange) in a full-throttle celebration of what’s possible when, at long last, musicians get to play music together again in one room. Producer Schlett’s category-defying mixes were mastered by Greg Calbi (David Bowie; Bruce Springsteen), the legendary engineer Sam has been lucky enough to work with for a number of years as well.