The CHEEKY Issue: Samia

words By Amany Khreis, photos by lexi spevacek

“Pool,” the first track off Samia Najimy Finnerty’s debut LP, The Baby, opens with a voice memo of her grandmother singing her a lullaby in Arabic. It’s the same song that was brought back on her sophomore album, Honey, with “To Me It Was.” The second time around, her grandmother closes out the track with the same voice memo. Both songs are incredibly sad, an emotion that is central to the singer-songwriter’s music.  “I wanted to keep her on both records. To me, that's her producer tag or Jason Derulo moment.” Samia says.

Samia goes by just her first name, which she shares with her grandmother. Her grandmother is a huge part of her identity as a Lebanese-American. She’s been trying her best to hold on to her Lebanese heritage, and she found that her grandmother’s lullaby connected her with a community of people. “I didn't have many Arabic-speaking or Lebanese friends growing up besides my cousins and I didn't know that was such a popular lullaby,” she says. “It was amazing to see how universal that little lullaby is.”

Hocus Pocus star Kathy Najimy and director Dan Finnerty are Samia’s parents, and she grew up surrounded by the film industry. “I developed a disdain for the entertainment industry because of how it affects people — an image-oriented industry that made me sad,” she says, describing how she grew up. “I feel really lucky to have been around people who are artistic and people who encouraged me to be artistic.”

Because she grew up disillusioned by celebrities and industry politics, she’s found it hard to connect to her past. Recently, Samia’s been determined to stay in touch with Lebanese culture. “It was a huge part of my childhood,” she says of her heritage. “It's something I'm trying desperately to hold on to and I'd love to go back to Lebanon.”

Samia grew up in the New York City DIY scene, finding friends in bands like Del Water Gap, discovering herself through shows and open mic nights. “I started coming into my identity as an artist in New York because of the people that I was spending my time with and the bands that I got to be a part of,” she says. “That place is really conducive to that kind of odyssey. You have to find yourself back there.”

I meet Samia in the basement of Thalia Hall. Samia has a cold. There’s a humidifier in the corner of the green room turned on and a plate with ginger and lemons. She greets me from a distance, terrified I’m going to catch whatever ailment she has. First impressions are everything, and my first impression of Samia was that she’s unfathomably kind and super petite. She is also a powerhouse.

Despite being sick, she puts on an incredible show. No one in the audience would have been able to tell had it not been for her Instagram story disclaimer asking the audience to pretend that everything is fine and that she’s totally not sick at all. “I know a lot of it is psychosomatic,” she tells me. “I get really anxious when I'm starting to be sick. So I just mostly try to calm myself down and then I end up being fine. I think a lot of it is in my head, ultimately.” 

The Honey Tour is the first chance Samia has to support a full length project on tour. She released The Baby in 2020 during quarantine. Her latest record takes on a poppier sound than its predecessor, tackling relationship problems and referencing pop culture through slang and metaphors. Her conversational and elusive songwriting style takes center stage on Honey.

“It's really just a means of catharsis for me,” she begins explaining her songwriting process. “I use it as a tool. It’s trying to process feelings in real time — half of me does that in poetic code  and the other half is just the things that I'm too afraid to say conversationally.”

On “Kill Her Freak Out,” she sings about killing an ex’s new love interest. This could be off-putting to older generations, but her younger listeners are well attuned to Samia's hyperboles. On “Sea Lions,” she’s harder to read, singing about a relationship that’s too far gone. Its outro is a voice memo of someone playing a word association game. “Charm You” and “Honey” find Samia being more direct, singing, “I don't wanna charm anyone this time / I don't wanna make anybody mine” and “I wanna go to the beach and die on the beach / I wanna be a mermaid.”

Her songwriting process is unpredictable. “It’s pretty 50/50,” she says. “There’s some songs on this record that took seven months to write and there are some songs that took 15 minutes. It depends on the magnitude of the feeling.”

Touring has led to great moments for Samia, both on and off the stage. She tells me her most memorable moment was in Minneapolis, where she invited papa mbye (who features on “Mad At Me”) on stage. Caleb Wright, her friend and collaborator who produced Honey, also came out with his family to watch the Minneapolis show. “That was a full circle moment,” she says. “It felt like a really special friendship moment and a lot of people who were on the record got to see it.”

She also stopped by DisneyLand during touring with her band and crew. An Instagram photo dump commemorates the trip with a caption insisting that there’s “nothing to see.” She tells me Disney is one of her favorite places to go. “It was kind of in the middle of a stressful time. So necessary.” she says.

What else does Samia do during her time off? The writer reads. Her most recent read is In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, an author she adores. She describes the memoir as inspiring and devastating all at once. Next on her list is to read Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson.

For her next record, she’s hoping to turn towards a rock sound. She’s done slow and upbeat, and she’s ready to explore something new. “I'm really only ever trying to support the stories,” she says of her sound. “There’s no one genre choice, it just sort of happens. Next thing that I want to make is a rock record because I think it's the most fun thing for me to tour.”

Samia is content in music. Making it, going on tour, even karaoke nights with her friends. To her, it’s all honey.