In many ways, Sam Tompkins' debut album has been a long time coming. But as of Friday, after a string of singles, hi, my name is insecure is finally here in full.
"There's been points where I felt like I wasn't even gonna get here," admits Tompkins on a late afternoon in July, speaking with Variance ahead of the new release. "It's sort of this huge thing in the distance for us artists that are coming up. Like, 'Yeah, one day maybe we'll get there.'"
The moment it finally began feeling real for the British singer-songwriter was nearly two years ago when he released his gripping breakout single "Lose It All," dubbed a Must-Hear track by Variance upon its release in 2022.
"I think it's my favorite off this album just because it means so much to me. But I released that and I was like, 'Oh, right. So there's traction to this now—like real traction," recalls Tompkins.
Over the last few years, he says it seemed that some of his "wins" were by accident or coincidence, but the results turned out to be exactly how it was meant to be. One such example was the release of another standout track "Time Will Fly," which arrived last summer along with a lyric video comprised of old footage chronicling the singer's life as a young kid and his rise just in recent years.
"I wrote 'Time Will Fly' with a couple friends and Nick Mira from Internet Money back in November of 2021," explains Tompkins. "And it was very much not my style, but the songwriting was. So I put it on the back burner and I was writing a lot of stuff and I had my show at the iconic Hammersmith Apollo in London, and I thought instead of putting out a poster like I would normally do. But I thought a good way of doing that would be writing a song, making it like a minute long so it fits on all the platforms and stuff, telling my story up until I get right to the point of the Hammersmith Apollo show."
Tompkins continues: "I was trying to write stuff and nothing was sticking. And then I remembered that I had this song—it was called '939' originally 'cause I stayed at 939 one of the times I went to L.A. and my life changed. I changed the 939 and the address at the end of that chorus to Apollo Hammersmith and we stripped it down to just a piano and made the song sound like what it does now."
That experience is partly reflective of Tompkins' journey thus far in an industry which can sometimes be cruel and unaccommodating. Especially for someone who admits he is "very socially anxious," sharing of himself and being vulnerable doesn't always come easily, but it's one of the very elements which have resonated so deeply with fans, to the point where Tompkins has actually found it to be empowering.
"In that last rap battle scene in Eight Mile, where Rabbit (or Eminem) starts reeling off what his opponent's gonna say about him," says Tompkins. "He says, you're gonna call me this, this, this and this. And once he said it, there's nothing that the other person could say about him. And for me, hi, my name is insecure—It's like, now that I've said it, now that I've opened up and been vulnerable about all these things that make me tick and make me feel down sometimes or anxious, you can't poke holes through me with them."
He adds: "Being secure in the fact that you're insecure is kind of a weird thing. I feel once you've said something like that out loud, I'm a firm believer in a problem shared is a problem halved. But I also think once you've said it out loud, that's the first step of getting to the next stage. And sometimes that what it takes to overcome the things that are holding you back."■