Interview with Sami Siteman

Sammy Siteman’s debut album, Welcome to My Brain, dropped Friday, August 21st, but its songs span more than a decade. Some date back 11 years, others were finished as recently as this past December, and together they catalog loss, grief, and mental health struggles that her earlier, more love-and-heartbreak-focused songs hadn’t touched.

The pop-country singer-songwriter, who describes her own sound as living in the “hopecore” space, built the record with a handful of collaborators: Alexa Capelli and producer Gavin Hudner on “Slow Motion,” her friend Michelle Hall on “Mount Everest,” and producer Dylan Emmett handling the bulk of the recording, mixing, and mastering over a year and a half. She just wrapped her first-ever headline tour behind it, a run of small, intimate shows after not performing live in over a year.

The album’s emotional center is “Lost and Found,” written after her grandmother passed away two years ago. “I didn’t even consciously feel like things were getting better until I wrote that song,” she said. “Somehow writing it, the lyrics almost went through me and then to me, and I absorbed it. Some part of me knew I was going to be okay, even though it was devastating.”

She talked about balancing the album with a day job, what her first tour taught her about performing live, and why arenas have never appealed to her.

MIA: You just released your debut album, Welcome to My Brain, on Friday, August 21st. Knowing it’s out in the world now, what are you feeling?

SITEMAN: Honestly, it’s been such a journey. Some of these songs I wrote over 11 years ago, all the way through to this past December, so it catalogs a huge span of my life, loss and grief and mental health struggles, different ways I view the world. My previous songs were mostly about love or heartbreak, which was true to me at the time, but I wanted to show people more of my brain, the way I think, how important mental health is to me. Funny enough, I originally wanted to call it just Life, but the concept wasn’t quite the same, and once Welcome to My Brain came to me, I knew that was it. It took a year and a half to record everything with my producer. Seeing the reaction has meant so much. I write my music for me, but I share it because I want to connect with people, help them the way my favorite artists help me. At my last tour, a fan I’ve known since 2020 sat right in front of me singing “Mount Everest” back at me, and knowing the song had actually helped her through something is all I could ever ask for.

MIA: Do you draw on outside inspirations, or write for specific people?

SITEMAN: The majority of it is from my own personal experience, but there are exceptions. “Slow Motion” I wrote with Alexa Capelli and our producer Gavin Hudner. We weren’t writing it for my album, we were just talking about how fast life moves, especially being in the music industry, and how you constantly feel like you have to catch up. It wasn’t intended for the album originally, but it fit so perfectly that I got to record it. “Mount Everest” I wrote with my friend Michelle Hall. I used to think writing had to be something I did alone, and I still write solo sometimes, that’s still important to me, but I’ve learned collaborating can get you a better result and be just as cathartic, because you’re expressing yourself and connecting with someone who’s feeling something similar at the same time.

MIA: A lot of your songs are about other people, but told from your own perspective. How does that work for you?

SITEMAN: My grandma passed away two years ago, and we were so close. When she passed, I felt this dark cloud over me for a long time. Writing “Lost and Found” really helped me start processing my grief in a way nothing else had. I wrote it about her and the emotions I was going through. I didn’t consciously feel like things were getting better until I wrote that song, and somehow writing it, the lyrics almost went through me and then to me, and I absorbed it. Some part of me knew I was going to be okay, even though it was devastating.

MIA: What were the biggest challenges in putting this album together?

SITEMAN: Honestly, budget first. Music isn’t my full-time income yet, I have a day job that pays the bills, and it’s hard to keep justifying spending savings on something I care about this much. I want to pay my collaborators properly, pay for distribution and rights management, pay my manager, Forbes, everyone on my team deserves it, it’s just hard when the music isn’t making that yet. I wish I could create and share it all for free, but that’s not how the world works, so it’s a mindset shift I’m still working through. The second challenge was time. I have a full-time job, so finding time to record was hard. The writing wasn’t necessarily what took long, some of these songs I’d had for years, but recording takes hours and hours with my producer, Dylan Emmett, who mixes and masters everything. It’s a huge time commitment, but it’s worth it to share the music I want to share.

MIA: Do you have a favorite track on the album?

SITEMAN: That’s a hard question, they’re all my children. But because of the emotional weight it took off me to write, I’d say “Lost and Found” is one of my favorites I’ve ever created. It encapsulated the pain I was experiencing during such a challenging time. I’ve also written a lot of songs that will never come out, and some I thought I wanted to release that I look back on now and go, nope, not quite the caliber I want to be releasing at this point in my career. I wrote “Breathe” back in 2015, one of the first songs I ever wrote, and even though it’s not as complex as some of my newer stuff, it still feels powerful in a certain way. It’s a helpful reminder not to totally knock everything I’ve done in the past.

MIA: You just wrapped your first-ever tour behind the album. How was that experience?

SITEMAN: It was amazing. I’m so fortunate to have had almost 150 people across the tour come out and support me. I hadn’t performed live in a year and a half before that, so jumping back into performing by doing a whole tour was a little insane, but I really wanted to support the album and go play it for people. Gratitude and learnings are the two words that come to mind. It was very intimate, the biggest show we had was 50 people, some were 26, 30, 42. That’s my favorite way both to see a show and to perform, I love being able to talk to the artist and connect afterward. It reminded me that I actually do like performing live, I just wasn’t sure after not doing it for so long. By my fourth show, in Santa Barbara, I finally felt really confident in my set, and then the tour was over.

MIA: How do you feel about performing live versus recording in the studio?

SITEMAN: I really do like performing live, it gives me a chance to connect with people in real life instead of just over social media, which I love too, but it’s special to do in person. That said, arena tours don’t really interest me, even as an audience member I don’t love big shows unless it’s an artist I’m really stoked about. I prefer a more intimate environment where the artist can talk about the songs and explain the backstory, and we get to chat after. That’s the vibe I want to maintain whether I’m playing for five people or a thousand. At the end of the day, the thing I feel most passionate about is songwriting, being able to tell a story that connects with people and helps them. I admire the heck out of Taylor Swift for doing arena shows for three hours, I can’t imagine how exhausting that is, but that’s just not me.