Irish-Portuguese solo artist Sam Segurado releases his brand-new single ‘Phoenix’ showcasing the foundation of his love for music and unmatched talent for fusing captivating instruments with profound lyricism.
‘Phoenix’ sees Sam Segurado’s blend of alternative-indie-folk on this acoustic offering. Interplaying guitar and piano with his delicate vocal delivery atop a lush synthscape, its lyrics evoke the line Segurado so often treads between romance and sorrow.
“Draw you in the sand before you wash away”. This chorus line to ‘Phoenix’ came to Sam Segurado one night in a dream, and he immediately woke up in that early morning, wrote it down, and began to play it gently. The theme of the track is one of loss, whether about a relationship cut short, or a life taken too soon. Listeners will resonate with this profound theme, one which touches so many of us after the shared experiences of pandemic and war.
Sam Segurado began recording his sophomore album, The Remainder, in 2018 with Stephen Lovatt in Segurado’s childhood home in Portugal. They recorded ‘Phoenix’ in one take, where you can hear the crickets and even an airplane passing overhead in the second verse. One of his childhood best friends, Christina Campbell, later added gorgeous backing vocals in her Scottish lilt. Sam Segurado finished the song with producer Shane Becker, who encouraged him to make this track a stand-alone single.
Drawing on his own personal struggles and experiences, Sam Segurado explores tales of difficult times. The forthcoming album evokes a superhero moniker, the heroism of survival. The album’s message only increased in significance through its own rocky recording, turbulence directly exposed to him, and the war in Europe, in turn, the record earning its title, The Remainder.
Speaking about the track, Sam Segurado explains, “It’s about loss. Maybe the end of a relationship, or maybe someone who is gone too soon. That’s part of why I decided to release it on Jeff Buckley’s birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that he left so young, but his influence on my music will never die.”
Sam Segurado also shot a music video, a sequel to his ‘Overspace’ film from last year. While the latter told a story of the implosion of a relationship, his new story deals with the aftermath. We follow the same character in an allegorical and surreal view of the hole left behind when someone leaves your life. She literally drags around an apparition which appears before her, her emotions shifting from tenderness towards it, to spite at its continued burden, to a final acceptance and its destruction. Much like the song itself, the video is symbolic of loss and moving on or letting go.
Speaking about the music video, Sam Segurado says, “Just like song, the video also came to me in a burst of inspiration. Once I had the idea for this video, I realised that Phoenix was the only song that it would work with. They’re both about the weight of our past, and the difficult in the letting go. It’s another element of the concept of the album as a whole. The Remainder: what’s left of us, after we’ve gone through hell. And the power in that which remains.”
The Remainder, is the second album of a planned nine. Sam Segurado’s vision is antithetic to an industry where singles and bite-sized content are the norm. “It’s in a lot of old folklore, the concept of a soul jar. That we can put our soul into a separate entity to keep it safe. I’m doing the same thing, except I’m splitting my soul into nine albums. An act of self-preservation then. I’ve always loved albums. It’s my absolute favourite way to consume music, I got that love from my older brother.”
The single news of ‘Phoenix’ comes alongside the sophomore album, The Remainder, release date of February 24, 2024, coinciding with an album launch at The Cellar, Workman’s Club, Dublin on February 25, 2024.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sam Segurado grew up in Portugal and visited Ireland frequently, the home of his mother. He’s a well-travelled individual having moved to Cambridge at the age of 19, Paris at the age of 20, Dublin at 24, and St. Petersburg at 27. He said that his writing, poetry, storytelling, and guitars served as his continuous home and that this creation kept him rooted.
Dublin, to him, was his home. In order to gather the courage to record his debut album, Looking For The Fox, he spent a year on the city’s open-mic scene. On his second album, The Remainder, Segurado goes even deeper inward while extending his arms out to the people closest to him, soaking up the suffering, love, and struggle that give rise to human survival
