Samia’s “Bovine Excision” is a shining example of the indie singer/songwriter’s soul-stirring lyricism, maintaining the gut-wrenching musicality her fans have come to love.
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Stream: “Bovine Excision” – Samia
Simply complex: A contradiction that somehow perfectly describes the lyricism and musicality of Samia’s latest release, “Bovine Excision.” Released January 14th via Grand Jury Music, the indie rock singer/songwriter’s first single of the year is an intense track that explores the heavy emotions of self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Diet Dr Pepper,
Raymond Carver
Sitting in the bathtub
while they’re knocking
I wanna be untouchable
I wanna be untouchable
Samia has always been a lyricist, using her pen and paper to evoke intense emotions from herself and, thus, her listeners. “Bovine Excision” finds her utilizing this otherworldly talent with words to express her own contradictory feelings about femininity. Her femininity is under attack with the realization that men are not equivalent to God, and her intense reliance on their opinions of her has altered her sense of self.
“I’ve spent the past two decades unintentionally conflating an abstract idea of men with my understanding of God,” she tells Atwood Magazine.
“The person I became in order to impress this imagined figure is inseparable from who I am today. A significant part of my personality was built around traits and behaviors I believed – whether through observation or hearsay – men would like. With this album, I’ve tried to confront that head-on.”
The battle between external expectations and internal desires is a main theme throughout “Bovine Excision.”
What Samia believes to be her right to femininity is directly opposed to society’s ideals and leads to a bloodless extraction of her self-worth and emotions.
With a subtle building power in the first few seconds of the track, the listener gains an immediate understanding of where the song is headed. Starting with the twangy acoustic pluck, Samia creates a trance-like state before introducing drums that fill out the instrumentation in the next few verses. This builds and releases until the end of the song, where she unleashes a full climax of emotions. This soundscape follows a similar pattern to the lyrics, which give meaning to the emotions the instrumentation brings forth.
You took the door off its hinges
Doll eyes red in the litmus
I felt the pea, can I eat it?
I felt the pea, can I eat it?
A testament to her lyrical prowess is a reference to the fairy tale, The Princess and The Pea. The lyric, “I felt the pea; can I eat it?” can mean many things in the context of both the story and the song. In the story, a princess is tested to become the wife of a prince. The test involves lying on a pile of mattresses, with a single pea secretly placed between them. The princess who detects the pea is honored as a true princess and gets to marry the prince. On the surface, this tale explores the sensitivity associated with femininity.
Feeling a pea under all those mattresses could signify that the princess is indeed a true princess because she is so delicate that even the slightest disturbance could harm her. This perspective highlights the impossibility of meeting the societal standard of femininity that Samia struggles with, living her life delicate and fragile just to satisfy what society claims men will appreciate.
Another way to interpret the lyric is as a discovery of the true self. The pea being felt isn’t a sign of a fragile woman, but of a secure one. In this interpretation, the pea represents the princess’s ability to confront herself and her feelings wholeheartedly, unafraid to be who she truly is in the face of judgment from outsiders. Samia’s reference to the story through this lens resonates with her narrative of evolving beyond her perceptions of men and God and simply being.

Picking leeches off white underwear
Neck, back, inscrutable stare
I wanna be impossible
I wanna be impossible
Fred flirts with the bartender
“We met last year here, remember?”
She says, “I’m old but I’m not dead”
She says, “I’m old but I’m not dead”
Lyrics like “I wanna be untouchable” and “I wanna be impossible” narrow in on this concept. Untouchable means perfect as in perfectly aligned with the world’s expectations of her, while becoming impossible indicates her recognition that her desires feel unattainable.
This acknowledgment leads to an unyielding emotion that paralyzes her and compels her to fight through. The raw intensity of the track advances this narrative, with lyrics like “drained, drained bloodless” expressing the emotional void stemming from paralyzed fear.
The song’s title was brought on by Samia’s interest in the way cattle are handled bloodlessly – a strange phenomenon that felt akin to human emotion.
“I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction – this clinical pursuit of emptiness,” she says.
In “Bovine Excision,” Samia is in constant pursuit of this emptiness while fighting against her true self.
In the accompanying Sarah Ritter-directed music video, there are visuals of isolation in comforting settings with eerie overtones. Shots taken from far away, behind, or above, give the scenes a sense of utter loneliness. Samia’s desire to fit the mold of the expectations set by the world around her has driven her to isolation.
Rice wine, lime-flavored Lays
Passing go to sit in driveways
Clad in leopard, clutch the banister
Twirling like a Degas dancer
I just wanted to be your friend
Cup of tea in your cold hand
And drained, drained bloodless
And drained, drained bloodless…
Though she describes herself as bloodless or empty, both the track and the video have constant mentions of liquids. In the lyrics, it’s Diet Dr. Pepper and tea, and in the music video, she drinks wine and plays in ocean water –alluding to the need to fill the hole she’s discovered. A tinge of hope can be drawn from this.
Throughout the track, we also listen to Samia go through this empty feeling and play around with her desire for separation – and therefore isolation – but she’s aware of her imperfections. The external expectations she fears are pressing at her so intently that she craves that feeling of emptiness as a form of comfort, but she knows it’s there – and that’s the first step.
The lead single off Samia’s upcoming third studio album Bloodless (out April 25th via Grand Jury), “Bovine Excision” is a reflective song that both cleanses itself of its external expectations and confronts them head-on.
Fortunately, it’s the acknowledgment of these forces that ultimately sets her free.
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Stream: “Bovine Excision” – Samia
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