Samantha Sidley shares “Quarantine Edition” video for title track from “Interior Person,” named one of Los Angeles Times “Best Albums of 2019.”

Lesbian jazz vocalist’s LGBTQ anthem “I Like Girls” from “sweet, funny, tastefully arranged vocal-jazz disc about same-sex romance,” also out now.
 
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Samantha Sidley as photographed by Logan White

 
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Samantha Sidley | “Interior Person”

“Samantha Sidley Was an ‘Interior Person’ Before This Whole Thing Happened” — Los Angeleno

The girls who gathered for Samantha Sidley’s iconic “I Like Girls” video have all gone home, and now Sidley is all alone in the “Quarantine Edition” music video for the title track from her debut album Interior Person, named one of the Los Angeles Times’ “Best Albums of 2019.”
 
“I honestly had no idea quite how poignant this song would become,” Sidley says. “It was written as a positive twist or response, if you will, to the isolation that accompanies depression. The song has taken up a new meaning during the pandemic, which has pushed all of us to be more isolated physically and emotionally.”
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zr-PvKBGyc
 
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Samantha Sidley | “I Can’t Listen”
 
Samantha Sidley’s “I Can’t Listen,” written by Inara George, is about struggling with depression. But the Los Angeles-based jazz singer is positively ebullient about the black-and-white, noir-styled video.
 
“I love that video,” Sidley gushes to Billboard. The clip was directed by Nigel DeFriez, a friend who also helmed the clip for “I Like Girls,” another track from Sidley’s debut album Interior Person. “It feels like a movie, an old French film, this woman riding in a car, gonna get the fuck out of town, she can’t look at herself anymore...”
 
“(DeFriez) said, ‘Can I just film you singing the song with a handheld camera?’ I said, ‘Sure, of course!’ We did it two days later. Barbara (Gruska, Sidley’s wife and album producer) did all the lighting, just switching things on and off. It was a real DIY thing, but I think it came off beautifully and it tells a really beautiful story.”
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi3v2hCnUc4
 
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Samantha Sidley | “I Like Girls”
 
“Best Albums of 2019” — Los Angeles Times
 
See the video for “I Like Girls” and read an in-depth interview with the Los Angeles Times here.
 
“Sidley’s quietly radical debut album, Interior Person, is premised on the idea that a listener in 2019 shouldn’t have to decode a love song to hear herself in it. Something you might not have realized you needed (though this L.A. native certainly knew she did): a sweet, funny, tastefully arranged vocal-jazz disc about same-sex romance.”
 
“A sophisticated and delicious ice-breaker, serving anthemic lyrical content for an evolving culture.” — Grimy Goods
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glEdQNP13k
 
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Samantha Sidley | In The Press
 
“Samantha Sidley turns ‘Singing In The Rain’ into a pro-lesbian anthem.” — Refinery29
 
“Open and vulnerable, vivacious and calming.” — FORBES
 
“Startling... the proudly lesbian L.A. vocalist upends romantic jazz-pop tradition.” — LA Weekly
 
“A breath of fresh air.” — JAZZIZ
 
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Samantha Sidley
Interior Person
Out Now
(Release Me Records)
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
  

Track Listing:
 
01. I Like Girls (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO)
02. Only You Can Break My Heart
03. Naked To Love
04. Butterfly In My Ass (STREAM)
05. I Can’t Listen (VIDEO)
06. Listen!! (STREAM | MP3)
07. Rose Without Thorns
08. Busy Doin’ Nothin’ (STREAM | MP3)
09. Easy To Be True
10. Interior Person (VIDEO)
 
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Samantha Sidley | About
 
Samantha Sidley is a jazz vocalist, born-and-raised in Los Angeles, and she likes girls.
 
The words “I like girls” are the first thing you’ll hear when Sidley’s debut album Interior Person (Out Now, Release Me Records) opens. The song is an unassuming anthem, a future standard for an evolving culture. It’s also a fun and funny ice-breaker that you’ll sing along with.
 
“I Like Girls” is a peek into what plays out as a meticulously crafted debut album featuring Sidley’s beautifully trained voice taking confident ownership of songs written for her to sing by some of the most important women in her life.
 
These other “girls” include fellow musicians Inara George, Alex Lilly, and Sidley’s “Top One” favorite musician of all-time, her wife, Barbara Gruska.
 
“Inara and Alex and Barbara wrote songs that are all very personal to my story – they literally are my story – and from my lesbian perspective, which I appreciate so much,” Sidley says. In addition to co-writing many of the songs here and playing drums (masterfully) on many of the tracks, Gruska also produced Interior Person in a studio constructed in Sidley’s childhood bedroom.
 
“My whole life was a song,” Sidley says of her childhood. “If I looked at a tree, it was a song. If I felt happy, sad, joy, it was a song. When I first heard Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ I remember thinking: ‘I understand.’ I’ve always considered myself an interpreter, which is sort of and undervalued art form. I like to take a song and make the story true for me.”
 
Sidley soon discovered Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, soul music in general, and her own personal “soulfulness” itself. You know, like all seven-year-olds do. Later, considering how annoyed 11-year-old Sidley was when her vocal instructor wouldn’t allow her to sing Holiday’s “Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)” at her first recital, it all made perfect sense.
 
A decade later, Sidley got to sing whatever she wanted, performing at NYC’s legendary Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, where she lived in Dorothy Parker’s room, listened to a lot of Anita O’Day and Ella Fitzgerald, and landed a rave review in The New York Times.
 
“She knows exactly how I express myself and what my intentions are,” Sidley says of her working relationship with Gruska. “Collaborating on this record has actually been a much longer collaboration of us getting to know each other.”
 
Interior Person, the debut album from Samantha Sidley is out now featuring the single “I Like Girls”.  Samantha Sidley is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
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Samantha Sidley | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : RELEASE ME RECORDS
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL