Impulsiveness is often thought of as a negative personality trait to have, but haven’t we all done something out of impulse at one time or the other? and furthermore, doesn’t that kind of earnest and spontaneous sensation lead us to take a leap of faith required to do what we’ve always wanted to do? For Samantha Marie, one nudge in the right direction was all it took for her to finally take her musicianship to the next level.
Hailing from a small southern Florida Beach Town, Samantha Marie Saglibene always found peace and a center in music. Her mental health struggles all got just that bit better when singing entered her life, allowing her to channel all of those emotions into five years of musical theater. When Highschool came around, so too did some isolation, as it was difficult to share her talents with anyone, making the process much more intimate and controlled.
After the coronavirus in 2020, her college classes started to merge into an online platform, giving Samantha more time to sing and travel. During a trip to Los Angeles, she was inspired by a friend who had heard her sing, and they urged her to “just do it.” Driving her car across the country at the beginning of 2022, and turning her life around in many ways, Samantha is doing just that.
Samantha, let’s get to know you a bit first. When did you realize you wanted to be a musician?
I realized I wanted to be a musician when I was 13 years old, and I couldn’t stop singing-I had this natural twang to my voice that put me in lead roles in musical theatre in my hometown. I began making YouTube videos, and doing theatre shows nonstop-my life revolved around music, afterall I was young and I was not yet worried about the thoughts of what others might think or how “far it could go”- I just loved to sing and that was it. Watching old home videos recently, featured me in my pre-teens running around the house singing, putting on shows for the video camera. Singing became something that always had my back-it was my “thing”. It was something I would do when everything else was falling apart-and that was when I knew I had to be a musician.
Who is Samantha Marie, the artist? What are her aims? Who inspires you in music? Who would you say informs your sound the most?
I have a lot of musical inspirations and each play a large role in my songwriting, melody, and singing inspiration. Jack Antanoff is a huge inspiration, his songwriting and production styles have created songs that make your love feel more sacred, your feelings heard. His work with Taylor Swift, and his own band, “The Bleachers” has been groundbreaking. Lana Del Rey, from the beginning of her career, when she was “Lizzy Grant”-so raw and honest with her lyrics, and her melodies flowed beautifully. King Princess is another major influence, lyrically and melodically. Katy Perry, with her incredibly raw pop sensations, is another huge inspiration. In informing my sound the most, I think this can vary from each collection I make. Running In Place was such a trial run process. I am in the making of my concept album, “Summers”, which will launch in the late Summer of this year and I am working with musical influences of The Weekend’s funk pop, Katy Perry’s radio pop hits, Taylor Swift’s folk storytelling found on “Evermore”, some indie pop found on Beabadoobee’s “She Plays Bass”, and some sprinklings of Men I Trust production styles.
What about outside of music? Who has played the biggest part in nudging you towards this career choice?
Outside of music, my mother and grandparents have been the most pushing of me creating music. My father passed away at a young age, and my mother and grandparents have been a large parental force for me, however, moving away to Los Angeles alone, and having all of my choices on me-It’s really been up to me to do what’s best for me and go after my musical ambitions. Nobody could do this for me, and I think everyone in my life was sort of waiting around for it to happen, for me to snap back to reality, to my roots, and do what was right for me. I have worked jobs that didn’t fit, and have tried to become something that society would call “normal”, hence me getting a marketing degree. This whole process has been so freeing, and honestly it really proves that when you put yourself out there and start doing what YOU want to do, the world will bend around you.
With this EP you actively rejected playing to a niche or pigeonholing yourself into any specific genre, which is something that more and more artists are opting for nowadays as if it was a subconscious movement. Why do you think music is so genre-transgressive nowadays?
This is such a good topic, and it’s something I’ve been struggling with personally. Certain songs have their own sort of musical sounds to them and when I am writing them, I envision that ultimate outcome, and most of these songs vary between genres. I think artists are becoming more transgressive in this sense of not having to define themselves as a specific genre, and not having to associate themselves with sounding like “somebody else”. I one hundred percent feel the pressure of having to fit into a certain genre, but I think as a growing artist, trying to fit into a box isn’t fun, it takes away from the creative process. I like the idea of albums having more collective sounds, and that an artist can shift through their albums.
With a clinical ear, one could say you float somewhere between alt-rock and electro-pop, of the former, do you consider yourself an avid rock listener? If so, who are your favorite artists in that particular realm?
Another great question, and I am sort of figuring out my exact genre, and hope to get closer to it as I produce more. I would really love to do electro-pop songs with some electric guitar influences, as well as some softer alternative rock songs in my next album. This being said, I am a huge fan of rock. I have a lot of favorite artists for this genre, some well known, and some up and coming. Right now, I have been loving “Beach Bunny”, and her pinpoint lyrics, as well as “The Melvins” and their head-banging singles that have been coming out since 1992. My favorite of their songs is “Going Blind”.
A great deal of “Running In Place” is about organizing your creative force into a cohesive musical proposal that can break into the industry and subsequently be heard. Now that you have materialized that creativity into an EP, how do you feel about that process and the challenge it represents from here on out?
Being cohesive has honestly been the hardest part of this creative piece, as it is my first introduction into putting myself out there. Through this struggle of trying to “find my genre”, I think what’s helped the most is understanding the way I want people to feel when they listen to a certain song, and putting that into thought when producing. Criticism of others and the pressures of becoming a “headlining artist” are just the baseline of how it feels to put yourself out there into music. However, I truly have a different approach, and that is enthusiasm. If everything was taken away from me at the end of the day-you would find me, hopeful and excited about that next song I wrote, or the next melody I had come up with. That is the love of music.
Do you still feel like you’re “running in place” a bit or do you feel like you’re starting to go places?
This was my favorite question, and putting this EP into perspective, I have grown so much since first starting the concept of “Running In Place”, and I finally feel like I’m at a place where I am growing and starting to go places. Being honest with myself about creating music was the first step, because running in place was a sense of feeling so lost when I was at a point in my life where I wasn’t making music, and I was letting certain relationships and outer forces of my life control me, hence feeling like I was “running in place”. As I’ve stated in a response above, it is truly amazing what begins to happen when you start to live for yourself and do the things you want to do-you start going places, instead of running in place.
