MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Sometimes, an idea needs a very specific setting to blossom. For the singer-songwriter Samia, it was an Airbnb in Old Fort, North Carolina.
SAMIA: We're in a big A-frame in the woods, and we had one can of biscuits and a 24-pack of Miller Lites, and we just sort of sat there and listened to it.
KELLY: It was a new song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PANTS")
SAMIA: (Singing) Summer of '23, but I can't remember the last one.
We left it looping for what I think ended up being, like, 18 hours or something. We slept to it, and we ate to it. It just felt like we'd finally, like, birthed the spirit of this thing and, like, especially sonically, like, we figured out where the album was going to sit after that song, and so we just kind of wanted to, like, bask in it for a second.
KELLY: That album is out today. It's her third, and it's called "Bloodless." At its heart is a theme which Samia plays with from lots of different angles.
SAMIA: I was really fascinated with the concept of absence and just how powerful absence can be. So, like, whatever isn't there holds more promise and more possibility than what's there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAMIA SONG, "BOVINE EXCISION")
KELLY: When we chatted, I asked about one of the songs that explores this theme. It is called "Bovine Excision," which refers to a rare, mysterious phenomenon in which farmers find their cattle dead in the fields, drained of blood.
SAMIA: I just loved this bloodlessness as a metaphor. The thing that makes bovine excision so exciting is, where is the blood? Why isn't it there? And then, you know, it can sort of become anything in your mind.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOVINE EXCISION")
SAMIA: (Singing) I want to be impossible. I want to be impossible.
KELLY: Your voice is beautiful there...
SAMIA: Oh, thank you.
KELLY: ...Aside from anything else. Just lovely - the image you're wrestling with, though, is anything but beautiful. So link for me, just what is it that you're playing with here that you're exploring?
SAMIA: I'm playing with the desire to be an idea, to exist as an idea. I just love that with cattle mutilation, the meaning and the magnitude of it relies on remaining unsolved. So yeah, I'm just saying, like, I don't want to have to contend with my humanness anymore. I don't want to have to be reduced to my humanness. I want to be anything.
KELLY: You play a lot on this album with the absence of something. I mean, in this first song, you're talking about the absence of blood and where that led you to explore when you were writing songs. There's also a song about a hole punched in a wall by Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols?
SAMIA: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLE IN A FRAME")
SAMIA: (Singing) Nothing goes how it was going to. You missed the boat. You got to swim. But I don't have to tell you that.
The real meaning of it revolves around the power of a void or the power of an absence. And with - the literal hole left in the wall by Sid Vicious was this perfect representation of that to me. Like, why? You know, it creates this enormous myth, right? Like, why did he do that? What was he like? People want to come and see this literal absence.
KELLY: Where is this wall, by the way, that he punched a hole through?
SAMIA: At Cain's Kallroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
KELLY: And it's still there, the hole? The wall?
SAMIA: Oh, it's still there, yeah, and it's framed with a plaque...
KELLY: (Laughter).
SAMIA: ...That says Sid's fist.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: So what'd you do with that for this song?
SAMIA: I just referenced it, and I was just thinking about that idea in the context of my own life. And, like, I feel more comfortable - I like the person I get to be when I'm gone. When it's just a memory of me or an idea of me, it feels like there's so much more freedom, and your absence sort of grows in value with time, where your, like, human body does maybe the opposite of that (laughter). So that was where that started.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLE IN A FRAME")
SAMIA: (Singing) Maybe I was born for this, dying to myself while you hold the onus.
KELLY: So this is so interesting 'cause you're talking about being gone, about absence. And we're talking about how that aligns with the physical act of singing, which is a full-body experience. Did you feel - were you playing with that relationship? And how - like, how can you sing about absence when we're - I mean, I can hear your lungs filling as you're doing this.
SAMIA: That's so funny. That's such a good question. Yeah, there's so many contradictions there. And I think with the journey of this, like, sort of what ended up being a highly conceptual thing ended with me realizing, you know - or maybe I'd always known - the thing I'm really after is being known and making real, genuine connections. And so this is - sort of directly impedes that goal. And so, yeah, being able to, like, feel myself singing it and be - I think it was a battle with the concept sort of the whole time. And ultimately, like, having to really be there while I was talking about not being there was hilarious.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PANTS")
SAMIA: (Singing) There's us again in a 747 over the ocean. That's how you ruin that.
KELLY: I gather, from reading a couple of recent interviews with you, that there's another big theme in your writing and in these songs that is front and center, grappling with the way that men have projected expectations onto you.
SAMIA: Yeah, it's so funny because it's not even about any real expectations that I've faced from any real men. It's (laughter) just the idea of what they might want, which is something I know I was socialized to care about.
KELLY: Anticipating the expectations.
SAMIA: Anticipating the expectations, exactly - and I'd found that I built this personality around a set of criteria that I just imagined, hypothetically, hypothetical men would want (laughter). And, you know, coming to that realization was tricky. And then I introduced this process of trying to work backwards from there and trying to unlearn all of that, hoping that, like, underneath that would be some pure self that existed in a vacuum after all this time. You know, there's something to get back to. And what I found was that there was not (laughter). And then I - that, you know, became a journey of acceptance of the whole thing.
KELLY: Point me toward a song where that shows up on this album.
SAMIA: "Pants" - it's the final song, where I am just sort of, like, yeah, I think whatever I am is just a conglomerate of all the little things I've learned, everything anyone's ever said to me, everything I've thought people might want from me. And just, it's like a lint ball that is ever evolving, rolling forever.
KELLY: I also loved this song because we're talking about all kinds of complex, abstract ideas, Samia, and it's also just about a pair of pants.
SAMIA: Totally.
(LAUGHTER)
SAMIA: Like...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PANTS")
SAMIA: (Singing) Am I missing something? Who was I when I bought these pants? They're nonrefundable. Now I'm questioning everything I am. Weightless, eyes closed, let go. Let it take you down.
KELLY: That is Samia talking about her new album "Bloodless." It is out today. Samia, thank you so much.
SAMIA: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PANTS")
SAMIA: (Singing) Not today, no ballroom tears. I can't make this disappear. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
