Everything You Need To Know About Samia Before Her January Album Release ‘Honey’

Written by Zoe Tevyaw, Photography by Justin Higuchi

Samia, a vibrant Nashville & NYC-based indie singer-songwriter, is set to release her second full-length album on January 27, 2023 much to the excitement of her fast growing, loyal group of fans and listeners. After narrowing in on her shiny-yet-raw sound in 2020 debut album The Baby and 2021 EP Scout, 2023’s Honey is a highly anticipated follow up set to propel Samia further into the midst of girl rock and indie pop stardom.

Born to parents in the entertainment industry Kathy Najimy (Sister Act, Hocus Pocus) and Dan Finnerty, Samia grew up in New York, shaping her early music around the vibes of the city. Releasing a series of singles between 2017 and 2019, she gained some traction that caught the eye of Grand Jury Music record label, home to a handful of similar indie acts like Hippo Campus, Hovvdy, and Twin Peaks. She signed to Grand Jury and hopped on Hippo Campus’ 2018 tour as opening support, winning over the hearts of their fans with her captivating and unencumbered stage presence and nearly doubling her initial audience. 

On stage, Samia commands the attention of everyone in the room with an ethereal display of her mind and body. Prior to the definition that The Baby brought to her aura, sets made up of her earliest songs like “Lasting Friend” and “Someone Tell The Boys” drowned venues in feminine angst as she sang about the troubles she has faced as a young woman. This early Samia was frustrated, using brutal sexuality to convey hard messages in tandem with the anger in her voice and sound. Nowadays, as reflected in her music, this presence has been refined into something exceedingly more like “the calm before the storm” holding that same intensity with a more confident and deliberate glow.

The Baby, her first release longer than singles, has garnered over 30 million streams since its release. Accounting for half of these, “Big Wheel” has been a break out record for Samia. With deceptively lax instrumentals and a sense of rolling nostalgia, the song regails audiences with frustrations in all kinds of relationships in a manner so concrete it becomes abstract, so specific it becomes relatable. In an interview with Fader, she explains this fascinating piece:

“I wrote it after a few hours of laying in bed imagining hypothetical conversations with people that I was too scared to have in real life. It’s a passive confession of harbored resentments buried in a laundry list of gratitude.”

The second most notable song off The Baby is “Is There Something In The Movies?”, an incredibly poignant piece about disillusionment with the entertainment industry. The acoustic-oriented song contains its simplest sentiment in the chorus, “Is there something in the movies that’s better than my love?” When asked, Samia says she “felt betrayed by someone honoring that fantasy over my love. Glorifying the idea of legacy or life as a means to an end makes [her] really sad, especially when it comes to people dying young.” This idea specifically referenced family friend and actress Brittany Murphy, who passed at 32 in lines about a stuffed pig Murphy gave Samia as a baby, “I got it from someone who died of attention, and lived an extraordinary life.” 

In 2021, The Baby Reimagined attracted her even more attention as each song off the original album has been, as stated, “reimagined” with a strong lineup of featuring artists to bring their own sounds into the mix. MICHELLE, Remo Drive, and Palehound are just a few names that make this release captivating. Perhaps the most influential feature, indie folk powerhouse Briston Maroney lends his prowess to “Is There Something In The Movies?”. The collaboration brought his fans to her, compounded later down the line when the two revealed they were in a relationship.

Honey, in its earliest description from Samia, is a “real community record” made to represent her ecosystem of fans through “moments of catharsis”. Honey will subvert the expectations she’s developed thus far, adding a heaviness with a coming-of-age nature that her previous projects couldn’t have held without the perspective and experiences she now has. In this way, there will be a self-awareness and sense of responsibility lining the 11 tracks as the sounds defined in The Baby take on further life and presence.

Samia holds no hate for her place in the “sad indie” sphere, however Honey is going to transcend those somber feelings, becoming a piece reflecting that which perseveres in the face of them. Grand Jury describes it as a “stylish and vulnerable new record” where “Samia holds the mirror up to herself and allows us to see ourselves in the reflection.”