California dark-pop icon Samantha Margret just unveiled her powerful debut album Dream Girl. The title track is about the pressure women feel to embody an impossible ideal – pretty, charming, helpful, thin, gentle, still, patient, pink – as they confront the quiet violence of perfectionism.
Samantha’s songs “RAGE” and “Feminist GF” together have notched nearly nine million streams on Spotify alone. She’s become the standard-bearer for women who don’t want to be imprisoned by repressive stereotypes.
“When I’m making music, I never think about branding,” says Samantha. “A brand is something you design to be consumed. I never set out to be consistent or palatable. I’m chasing that fix of wonder. There is a center to what I make: a reckoning, a pleading. That’s not built to sell; it’s the shape of the questions I keep asking, the darkness I keep wrestling. Once the songs are made, things get trickier. I do want people to hear them. And that sometimes means thinking about social media strategy, or taking the promo photo that gets someone to press play. I’ve gotten lost before trying to “market myself.” It can feel like cutting parts of myself away, offering them up for applause…or boos. Life is messy and brief, and I want to spend mine asking good questions rather than trying to be liked.”
Watch the visualizer for “Dream Girl” below, and find the new album on the streaming services.
