Lucky Number Music

Today Samantha Urbani shares “Time Keeps Slipping“, the final single to be revealed from her forthcoming debut album Showing Up which releases this Friday 22nd September.

The Santigold-esque funk-pop of “Time Keeps Slipping” pairs glassy midi strings with a satisfyingly squelching bassline and features an ethereal sample of London based 80s pop duo Rexy’s cult track “Running Out of Time“. This fierce and self-referential ode is the perfect lead-in for Urbani’s long-awaited debut album release and follows recent singles “Showing Up”, “One Day at a Time” and “More Than a Feeling”, further revealing the shades and depths of Urbani’s impeccably crafted LP.

The lyrics see Urbani wryly reflecting on her early experiences in music, especially with her band Friends: “I was on a quest of anarchy, to rip apart success and pedigree… I became the hot commodity, with no way to avoid hypocrisy”.

Samantha says “This is my autobiography of my music career, the loopholes of being an anti-capitalist professional artist. To be the underdog but gain popularity. What do you do when your integrity mission has run its course? Because it’s crossed the line into hypocrisy. This may cause paralysis and the feeling of time passing in suspended animation hurts. Friends the band was a punk band, it’s paradoxical for something pure, resistant, radical, and anti-establishment to last in success in this world”.

Today Samantha Urbani unveils “Showing Up“, the title track, and Prince-inspired opener, of her forthcoming debut album (out September 22nd).

“Showing Up” follows the release of recent singles “One Day at a Time” and “More Than a Feeling” and introduces the album’s prevailing lyrical preoccupation: the fraying of personal and professional relationships – often leading to unequal power dynamics – and her continued commitment to showing up when it matters. “I’ve always been the tough one, to take care when you’re tired / Suck it up and hold your trembling hand when you’re out there being admired,” she coos over tubular bell effects and raspy bass guitar, later confessing, “Sometimes I wish I had more of a taste for vengeance / Sometimes I wish I’d been born more of a capitalist.”

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. Samantha says of the single:

“It took many iterations to find its most final form of power, just like me and anyone else who’s been thrashed around again and again. I always believed in it though, and finally re-recorded the intro verse during mixing, just as we were considering scrapping it. Counted it in like Prince, and cranked up the backbeat. Pretty simple and classic formula: power in vulnerability.”

The accompanying self-directed music video follows Samantha on a tender, near melancholic solo travel day from LA to NY- seemingly unsure of what or who awaits her. Filled with easter eggs that call back to Friends’ 2011 “I’m His Girl” music video and style choices reminiscent of ‘90s New York City music culture (including Samantha’s Coogi sweater, a nod to Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighbourhood and the Notorious B.I.G. – and an original bomber jacket from Madonna’s ‘Blonde Ambition’ tour), the DIY video is a multi-layered testament to the deep intentionality and razor sharp creative vision that shapes every facet of Samantha’s artistry.

Watch the video below, listen to the track here and pre-order the Showing Up album here.

To celebrate the release of Showing Up, Samantha has announced an album launch show at The Market Hotel in Brooklyn, NYC, on Friday 20th October. Tickets are available now.

Today, Samantha Urbani has announced that her long-awaited debut album Showing Up will be released on 22nd September, and shares lead single “One Day At A Time“.

Showing Up finds the former Friends-frontwoman pouring a decade of experimentation and personal growth into the sort of irresistibly loose-limbed, retro-leaning alt-pop that has always been her specialty. Co-produced by Urbani with Nick Weiss (aka Nightfeelings) the album is in keeping with Urbani’s predilection for spontaneity, with an organic approach to collaboration and contributions from close friends including Eric Cross, John Carroll Kirby, Shane Mckillop, Rostam Batmanglij, Molly Lewis and Sasha Desree, as well as Sade’s right-hand man Stuart Matthewman.

Sonically, the album captures a wide range of vintage influences, from Jam & Lewis to Tom Tom Club, halcyon 80s Madonna, 90s R&B to celestial disco and grooved out guitar-pop. Urbani’s innate ability to hit the sweet spot between heady pop melodies and unfettered experimentation makes ‘Showing Up’ such a compelling collection, whilst also encapsulating universal themes for both the head and the heart.

Lead single “One Day At A Time”, with shades of Rapture-era Blondie meets LCD Soundsystem, finds Urbani declaring “I’m immune to guitars, I’m immune to cool” over louche slap bass and sliding, Talking Heads-esque synths.

Samantha says about the single: “Ok, ok. I am the tough guy and I am dead serious. I am an advocate, a protector, and an activist. I’m also a total crusher and yolo’er and I take the sweet risks and I justify it all to myself even when I know I myself am being the idiot. This is basically the cutie goofer song about wanting the player and drawing it out. Kissing you FEELS vital to my survival! I know its NOT! It’s just a FEELING! BUT THATS A BIG FEELING! THATS A HUGE LONGING! THATS A LONG ACHING! Urgh, can’t we just ween it off little by little? Once a week act in love? Fuck it up one day at a time? Not fuck it up all at once?”

The track’s fantastical music video, created by Urbani alongside VFX Artists and Animators Leon Knight and Corrinne James, features cameos from Samantha’s close friends Georgia Jagger (angel/devil), Avery Tucker (cameras), Chloe Saavedra (drums), Isis Cahuas (raspberry beret), Yony Leyser (phones) and Nick Robinson (motorcycle). Watch it now, below.

Samantha Urbani may be best known as founding and fronting her own band Friends, the Brooklyn-based indie darlings, who were known for bridging their DIY roots into the mainstream, and also for collaborating with renowned music project Blood Orange, but she is about to cut her own unique swathe through the music landscape all over again.

2017’s debut solo EP Policies of Power and 2019’s single “Made in Love“, have provided tantalising tasters of what to expect from her solo material, but with new full single “More Than a Feeling”, which is the first single from Samantha’s forthcoming debut album, Urbani will now cement her position as unparalleled pop contrarian bar none.

“In music it’s natural to share love and connections with other people in music, and whether to collaborate or not is a complicated question. I wrote the vocal to something an ex was playing, just in my head. It became this weird solo conversation, a one sided collaboration. It sat on the back burner, but the emotion remained timeless enough to come back to. Years later I was falling in love, which was a cool and safe place to be, finishing a song about the opposite. I brought Molly Lewis into the studio to whistle, which sounds like an old western soundtrack for the tough guy who’s got no choice, and is really the tenderest of all” explains Samantha.

The track was written, recorded and co-produced with Nick Weiss (aka Nightfeelings) and features all-star ethereal whistling from Molly Lewis. Sonically Samantha’s music captures a wide range of vintage influences, from Janet Jackson to Tom Tom Club, halcyon 80s Madonna, 90s R&B to glossy disco and grooved out guitar-pop, her poetic lyricism and signature throwback production puts her in the league of pop’s greatest.

The accompanying music video, which Samantha directed, explores the liminality of unrequited love. She wanders through the neon wasteland of LA’s Hollywood Boulevard before embarking on a motorcycle ride with a helmeted man, never truly connecting with her masked driver or finding a place to settle down. Samantha says:

“My references for this video are pretty succinct. Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak my Heart” and Celine Dion “It’s all coming back to me now” – both 90s vids that had a huge impact on me, with boyfriends who die in motorcycle crashes. The video is a rescue fantasy – motorcycle guy is a modern day knight in shining armour- heroic but inhuman, totally protected with walls that cannot be broken thru. So, it’s the antagonist who I can’t seem to reach even when they’re right in front of me. A tragic figure of toxic masculine fragility/emotional unavailability. All of the motorcycle guy sequences are meant to be questioned whether it’s real or imagined. Like I’m waiting to be rescued and fantasizing knowing I’m on my own“.

Following the recent release of Samantha Urbani’s long awaited debut EP Policies of Power, ‘Hints and Implications’ has today been given the video treatment. Directed by Daniel J. Algarin, the video splices retrograde graphics as Urbani tussles with an alter-self and proves to be the perfect visual accompaniment to the EP’s bold opening track.   In Samantha’s own words:

“The concept of the video was originally meant to be a surrealist inescapable nightmare, a dream within a dream- my favorite Poe poem- as the songs about an impossible communication block & the ontology of interpersonal truth itself- juxtaposed with the absurdity of mundane life – I kept saying “twilight zone x maya deren x clerks” (3 of my favorite and most relatable things ever) – but as the video started coming together more through the edit than the treatment, it related to the sound of the song more than the concept – new wave x nu metal. 

 We tied it into the amazing EP artwork by Brodie Kaman, and held it up to the coloring genius of the video for Lush’s first video for De Luxe & the genius Jean Paul Goude x Grace Jones images… starring my most Edward Furlong self, in my mystic pizza hat.”

“Policies of Power” EP is available to order now, on a limited edition transparent coloured vinyl run of just 300 copies.  The video was premiered by PAPERmag.