Interview: SASAMI on Trusting Her Instincts, Embracing Creative Freedom, & Crafting Her Cinematic Pop Pivot, ‘Blood on the Silver Screen’

SASAMI’s third album ‘Blood on the Silver Screen’ isn’t just a pivot to pop – it’s the latest stop in her always-changing, instinct-led journey as an artist who follows her music wherever it wants to go.

‘Blood on the Silver Screen’ – SASAMI

SASAMI doesn’t pivot — she swerves.

Hard left, no blinker. With classical French horn training and two heavy, rock-forward records behind her, the Northern California-based singer, composer, and producer has made unpredictability part of the deal.

But on her third studio album, Blood on the Silver Screen, the GRAMMY-nominated artist throws her biggest curveball yet: A pop record. Glossy, cinematic, and totally unbothered by the rules of genre purity, it doesn’t wait for your permission – it’s already in the second chorus.

On Blood on the Silver Screen, SASAMI gives her fans a little bit of everything — theatrical, wild, and a little deranged, with SASAMI starring in every scene. “It’s as if there’s a main character who’s acting in all the songs, and you’re flipping through the channels at a hotel TV,” SASAMI tells Atwood Magazine, adding, “there’s something for everyone.”

She’s currently on the Blood on the Silver Screen tour, with what she describes as a true pop performance – with an upbeat setlist and a synchronized light show. “I really was thinking about this album so much as a body of work that I was going to play live. And so in some ways this is kind of the apex or the pinnacle of the album cycle for me.”

What makes Blood on the Silver Screen so compelling isn’t just its range – though there’s plenty – it’s the clarity of vision underneath the genre jumps.

SASAMI isn’t chasing coherence. She’s practicing craft. The result is a record that plays with contradiction: precise but loose, polished but raw, emotionally direct even when it’s veiled in cinematic metaphor.

Atwood Magazine sat down with SASAMI to talk about pop as a discipline, abandoning perfectionism, and what happens when you stop editing yourself – and just go.

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:: stream/purchase Blood On the Silver Screen here ::

:: connect with SASAMI here ::

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Stream: “Slugger” – SASAMI

A CONVERSATION WITH SASAMI

SASAMI: It’s been good. It is kind of wild – because I did an around the world promo tour in LA, New York, London and Tokyo. So right when the album came out I was around a lot of people. It was really nice.

SASAMI: I describe it as if there’s a main character who’s acting in all the songs, and you’re flipping through the channels at like a hotel TV. And it’s the same actor, but they’re in a different genre of film every time you flip the channel – there’s something for everyone on there.

SASAMI: I think that. I’m kind of selfish as an artist in terms of like, I just follow my creative whims. Whether that serves the music or serves the listeners or not – I just do it and I just trust that if I follow my instinct that I’ll make the best thing that I can possibly make. On this album – I’m not claiming to have made the best pop record ever. I just wanted to make my pop record and I wanted to practice the craft of pop songwriting. I really think about my work more as my experience more than I think about the final product of the album.

And so for me, I knew I was going to tour this album for a couple years, so I wanted to make music that I could dance to, that people could dance with me to, that I could sing – as opposed to screaming. And that was the impulse for making a pop record.

SASAMI: This is a challenge – I think making art is just so different. I mean, it’s not that different, but it’s like, even when I’m cooking, it’s hard to know when something is done. When it doesn’t need any more salt. It doesn’t need any more fat, it doesn’t need any more acid, it doesn’t need any more seasoning. You have to just walk away and be like, okay, this dish is finished now. And I take cooking really seriously!

I think about cooking the same way I think about music. I forget who said, I feel like it’s Bob Dylan and I think it would be pretty funny to misquote him. I don’t remember who said it, but someone said records are never finished, only abandoned. And it’s kind of that same feeling.

I absorbed so much pop music in the preparation for making this album ’cause I didn’t want to be learning too much in real time while I was actually writing. So I just spent like a year or so not writing, just like listening to pop music and absorbing it and trying to understand it and just enjoying it. And then when I actually started writing the album, I didn’t want to edit myself too much. Like I wanted to work on it a lot, but I didn’t wanna edit too much. I wanted to write from a very free flowing place.

So the whole album was written and recorded. Within a year. I worked in LA with Jen Decilveo and Rostam on the production side, but on the writing side, I just wrote them pretty much on an acoustic guitar at my house or a capella in the woods. I wrote a lot of it in nature, ironically, even though it’s a very city sounding record.

SASAMI: It’s funny because I have the nicest fans, and every album I like change so much and I just like brace for hate – and I really don’t have haters, which is offensive to me in some ways.

It’s not that I want haters, but I like it. I understand why music that pushes would have haters and maybe part of it is that I’m actually not chronically online and I miss some of the negative speak. And also I’m honestly such a fucking baby cancer. Like I probably couldn’t even handle it.

I don’t think this album has been ostracizing to fans. I saw a tweet after Squeeze came out, that was like, “for people who listened to System of A Down and Carly Rey Jepsen”. And I feel like that was all I needed to hear. I was like, okay, I can make anything I want.

And even when I made the kind of metal inflected stuff like that was, that wasn’t me trying to make a metal record. I was just using metal sounds and vernacular that I had kind of picked up in my music for like my generally alt indie crowd. And I think there were a lot of people at those shows on, on the Squeeze tour who had never moshed before. And it was really fun to open that space for them.

I think it’s the same thing for this album. You know, there will be people who more go to rock shows that will hopefully feel really open and present to dance at my shows. And maybe that’s not something they usually do at shows.

So that’s kind of the fun thing about always having new styles of music in my set. It’s like people are being exposed to things in, they’re maybe not always exposed to by coming to my shows.

SASAMI: I feel like I suck at lyrics. It’s not that I suck at lyrics, but my background is in classical french horn and composition. So I feel so much more comfortable on the instrumental side and I feel like lyrics are something that I’m still really trying to develop.

Honestly part of that is probably because I just listened to so much pop leading up to making this album, and I probably should have read more books or something. Like, my algorithm was very musically skewed and not necessarily lyrically or poetically skewed.

I still really like “Nothing But a Sad Face On” – that song is about me rewriting the historical story of Eve from the Bible, but instead of her being this wretched woman who ruined humankind, she’s just like a hot teenager who has a crush – and she like wants to have sex with her crush.

So she gets banished from Eden, and then so the song is like her, smoking a cig outside of the gates of the Garden of Eden and she steals her dad’s red convertible – I guess her dad is like God or something – but she steals her dad’s car and is like driving down the freeway to like meet her crush. It’s celebrating her as kind of like a sex icon instead of a destroyer of goodness.

Standing outside of the garden gate
With smoke burning to my lungs
Tears stream down and I seal my fate
With the taste of you on my tongue
Stay for me or pray for me
‘Cause Heaven is too far now
One taste of forbidden fruit has strung me out

‘Cause I want you right here with me
Even if I know it’s wrong
You like to tell me I’m pretty
With nothing but a sad face on

If Hell is the only place to get lucky
Then I will follow you down
For something so sweet
I’ve done crazier things
A mount of honey is worth the sting

SASAMI: Yeah, like I said, I really was thinking about this album so much as a body of work that I was going to play live. And so in some ways this is kind of like the apex or like the pinnacle of the album cycle for me.

I have a programmed light show that’s in sync with the songs – it’s a very proper pop performance. And I’m just really excited. I’ve actually toured the music quite a bit supporting other people and so I’ve played the songs live a bit, but I’ve never played them for people who actually know the songs.

I give the same energy whether I’m playing to like two people or 10,000 people or whether they know the songs or not. In a way, it’s interesting because when people don’t know the songs, there’s this resistance that you’re working against, which is like, you don’t know me and I’m trying, I’m really trying to pull you in.

So it’ll be interesting what it’s like to perform the songs for people who actually know them. Hopefully it’s just like energy building. But I’m just excited to have fun. The Blood on the Silver Screen tour starts April 19th in L.A. and goes over a month from there. So hopefully people can come join us in April and May!

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:: stream/purchase Blood On the Silver Screen here ::

:: connect with SASAMI here ::

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