Why Samia’s Debut Album Deserves Our Attention
We’re calling it, Samia has a long and prosperous career ahead of her.
Photos: @samiatheband
Alt-rock/indie lovers, get your purses ready as Samia Finnerty has released her debut album The Baby, which is certainly worth the wait and excitement it has generated. Finnerty, who simply goes by, ‘Samia,’ when making music, is a 23-year-old musician who gained attention a couple of years back when Spotify added her song, “Someone Tell the Boys”, to their playlist ‘Badass Women’ (and made it their first track too). The song’s unabashedly-direct chorus, “will someone tell the boys they’re not important anymore?” makes it worthy of the inclusion, and sets the tone for Samia’s characteristically sarcastic, witty, and deeply vulnerable lyricism — “couldn’t hear what he said, probably something prolific, just like my ex-boyfriend.”
Whilst this song is most definitely a fiery, feminist anthem, one which reflects Samia’s upbringing (her parents drilled feminist politics into her at a young age — and thank God they did), Samia wants it to be known that The Baby is an album about adolescence, more specifically, her adolescence, as opposed to female empowerment. In an interview with I-D Samia states, “A lot of the time, everything [women write] is categorized or reframed as empowerment, and I don’t often write from a place of empowerment. Usually, when I’m writing it’s from a place of desperation and pain.”
This sentiment is reflected in the 11 tracks that make up The Baby. In many ways, the album feels like a (very welcomed) invasion of privacy, as if we’re listening to the contents of Samia’s diary — “I got bug bites on my legs, I got two friends who look alike,” (Big Wheel), “Carried around a stuffed pig in my arms and I did it until I was five,” (Is There Something in the Movies). It’s these subjective lyrics that demonstrate Samia’s authenticity as a songwriter and transparency as a person, she isn’t trying to be anyone but herself, yet she manages to encapsulate the growing pains of her generation remarkably well.
Artists who possess Samia’s level of vulnerability are hard to come by, and in many ways, she has taken a risk with The Baby, by penning entirely auto-biographical songs that depict her fear of loneliness and need to be loved (hence, the title. Samia is ‘The Baby’.) The refreshing honesty of her lyricism paired with her gorgeous, pleading vocals, therefore deserves The Baby, all of the praise it can get, and all that it has gotten. If we (and many others) do say so ourselves.
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