Sharjah, United Arab Emirates-born, New York-based Irish-Persian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam R. spent the bulk of his formative years split between the third largest Emirati city and Monterey, CA. He fell in love with music listening to Pet Sounds and Graceland on his way to school in the mornings. “It was that juxtaposition of hearing Brian Wilson’s harmonies in a very barren, desert/Arabian landscape that I think planted the seeds for my love for making music that mixes different influences and challenges associations you might have with certain instruments,” Sam explains.
Started over seven years ago, Sam R.’s solo recording project Glassio has seen him amass millions of streams across digital streaming platforms and a loyal fanbase globally as a result of a sound that has seen apply a melodic sweetness to brooding dance beats — and often bridges influences from Big Beat to Chamber Pop to New Wave.
His debut EP 2016’s Poptimism was released to critical acclaim and featured viral single “Try Much Harder,” which peaked at #9 on the Global Viral Charts on Spotify. A series of singles and 2018’s Experience EP saw the New York-based artist quickly establishing an approach that paired electronic music with insightful storytelling.
2020’s full-length debut For The Very Last Time amassed over 7 million streams through digital streaming platforms and was named one of the best electronic records of the year by Bandcamp. Last year’s See You Shine charted at #1 on multiple iTunes Charts globally and made ways in Europe — perhaps as a result of “Breakaway” being featured in Amazon Studio’s Don’t Make Me Go and Netflix’s Locke and Key.
The next year or so will see the acclaimed New York-based electro pop artist release a string of singles collaborating with a number of artists — and the first single “A Friend Like You,” features Los Angeles-based dream pop artist Beauty Queen.
Hawaiian-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Katie Iannitello is the creative mastermind behind rising dream pop project Beauty Queen. Iannitello crafts sun-bleached, washed out music that has been described as the perfect soundtrack to crying in the bathroom during a high school dance.
Her Henry Nowhere-produced EP Out of Touch was released to critical praise across the blogosphere for material that drew from her laid-back Hawaiian upbringing paired with 1950s and 1960s songwriting influences and her lilting croon.
Their collaboration together “A Friend Like You” is a dreamy lullaby built around twinkling keys, thumping toms, bursts of angular post-punk like guitars and an anthemic hook paired with Iannitello’s plaintive crooning and the duo’s soaring harmony for the song’s hook and chorus. But despite the song’s anthemic nature, the song is actually a bittersweet and heartbreaking farewell to the “friend that sends you down bad choice road” that recognizes that this is indeed, a farewell forever.
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