Titus writes:
American singer-songwriter & musician Samia
Najimy Finnerty is a Californian by birth – born in Los Angeles on 12
December 1996 to actors Kathy Najimy and Dan Finnerty. She was named
after her maternal grandmother who was of Lebanese origin. After a
fairly uneventful childhood, she moved to New York when she was fifteen
and attended York Preparatory School. After briefly forming a band,
Samia went solo and began writing songs for her first studio album
which was entitled ‘The Baby’. This was released on Grand Jury
Records, as have all of her subsequent records. The first track on the
album was ‘Pool’ which begins with the last voicemail Finnerty’s
grandmother left before passing away in 2015, and she is in fact
singing a Lebanese lullaby. Finnerty described the concept of the
album as “emotionally accepting that I need people” and that “I am the
baby”. She released five singles from this album, the first of which
was the excellent ‘Is there something in the movies’.....this was NEARLY
my choice for Lex to play....very nearly.
In
2021 she released a couple of albums. First there was ‘The Baby
Reimagined’ which was a collection of covers and remixes from her first
LP, and then the compilation album ‘’Before the Baby’. She also
released her only E.P. that year, called ‘Scout’ which contained three
original songs, plus a cover of When in Rome’s ‘The Promise’. The E.P.
generally received positive views from the music press. I suppose you
could refer to it as a ‘sideline’, but Samia formed the band Peach
Fuzz in 2022, and they released an LP ‘Can Mary Dood the Moon?’. 2022
also found Samia writing songs for her January 2023 album ‘Honey’, and
six singles were released from this album. ‘Honey’ also attained
positive reviews and when speaking about the album, Finnerty said
“Optimism is the saddest thing in the World to me and I have a lot of
it”. I think she was referring to the fact that the album contained
both sad and happy personal songs. Perhaps surprisingly, Samia
released 2 other singles in 2023, that didn’t appear on ‘Honey’, one of
which was a cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ‘Maps’.
In
2025, a similar discography pattern emerged, whereby Samia released
several singles from her new album ‘Bloodless’ before its release in
April. The album has received mixed reviews, for instance from the
N.M.E. who opined that it “thrives on complexities and intricacies”. A
tour is planned for June 2025. Samia’s musical style has typically
been defined as indie-rock and indie-pop, and she has cited a range of
musical influences including Lana Del Rey, Nirvana, Father John Misty
and Brittany Howard. Personally I can hear a a lot of another idol of
mine who I have blogged about – Cat Power.
I
mentioned earlier on that Finnerty moved to New York at the age of
fifteen. Indeed she began her musical career there, but moved to
Nashville in 2021 for a “less chaotic” environment. Ironically she later
moved back to her birth place of Los Angeles, but currently lives in
Minneapolis. She insists that her folks raised her as a feminist and
that it is a “deeply embedded part of her identity”. She adds, that
feminist themes in her songwriting are not intentional and that she
feels that feminist ideals are inherently part of the female
experience. She does, however insist that rather than writing about a
place of empowerment, she is usually writing from a place of
desperation or pain. I have requested Lex to play Samia’s ‘Mad at me”
(which also features Papa Mbye) from the ‘Honey’ LP, which can be found
here.