Samantha Urbani: Showing Up
In a career brimming with projects to be proud of, Samantha Urbani has hit an all-time high with her debut LP. Featuring a title that knowingly nods to the time that has elapsed since her first releases, behind the scenes, the LA-based singer-songwriter has been anything but idle. A true pop polymath, Urbani’s energies have been poured into creative fields, all the while navigating the wild challenges life has thrown at her. With Showing Up, she celebrates that journey, offering an open-hearted and joyful body of work.
To get to the roots of Showing Up, we need to venture back. Born into a fiercely free-thinking household in Mystic, Connecticut, she benefitted from a proudly counter-cultural upbringing and that rebellious, improvisational spirit remains at the heart of her artistic approach today. Swapping Connecticut for New York in her late teens, she immersed herself in Brooklyn’s vibrant DIY scene and formed art-pop five-piece Friends in 2010. The band enjoyed a breakneck ascent – were included in the BBC Sound Poll, Radio 1 playlisted and generated reams of press coverage around their 2012 album Manifest and toured the world – before splitting in 2013. With a selection of solo deals on the table, Urbani chose instead to channel her energies into collaborating with her then-partner, joining Blood Orange as co-lead vocalist and touring performer before then embarking on an array of other projects.
A chameleonic talent, she’s enjoyed spells as an adjunct professor at NYU’s prestigious Clive Davis Institute, formed a record label in-order to re-release a long-lost singular LP by London based pop duo Rexy entitled Running Out of Time and today DJs internationally while also recently joining the A&R team at The Secretly Group. “I’ve always found that the more different projects I’m doing, the more inspired I am,” she explains. “So, I need to be around people who encourage a little bit of creative ADD.”
One such kindred spirit was close friend and producer Sam Mehran who partnered with Urbani when she started out on her solo career and whom “wasn’t someone who was going to imprint their production sound on me like I was their protégé, but somebody who could empower my vision and encourage my confidence as a producer.”
That creative synergy was clear on 2017’s five-track EP Policies of Power, and the pair soon began work on a sequel. “We had so much in common,” she recalls fondly. “We had both lost our older siblings, we had both experienced early success in buzz bands and we connected over a lot of mental health stuff, acting as a support network for one another. Which is why it was especially earth-shattering for me when he died by suicide in July of 2018.”
Devastated by the loss, and reeling from the past traumas that the tragedy unearthed, Urbani spent six months “in something of a dissociative episode”, to the point she couldn’t bring herself to even listen to music. Urbani credits hers and Mehran’s mutual friend Nick Weiss – AKA Nightfeelings – for pulling her out of the darkness. Weiss facilitated Urbani’s return to songwriting, quietly but firmly insisting she play him her demos, and ultimately restarting the creative process for Showing Up.
The collection’s prevailing lyrical preoccupation is the fraying of personal and professional relationships – often leading to unequal power dynamics – and her continued commitment to showing up when it matters. For Urbani, it was crucial to emphasise the importance of being emotionally present, be that by showing up for a romantic partner or by rejecting the toxic individualism of capitalist society to help affect positive change. The result is a deeply cathartic, ecstatic record – created on her own terms – and as overdue as its release might feel, she firmly believes Showing Up couldn’t have arrived a single second sooner.
“Not to negate or detract from the creativity of younger artists, but I love hearing from people who have had a very expansive journey. I want to see more artists putting out their debut albums in their 30s and 40s and 50s. And at 35, I’m proud to be one of those people.”
