Sam Himself Returns With “Mr. Rocknroll”

Indie rocker Sam Himself, dubbed the King of Tears by Swiss national radio, makes the case for a new nickname with Mr. Rocknroll, the third single leading up to his sophomore LP Never Let Me Go. The two-time Swiss Music Awards nominee’s latest release is a caustic send-up of the rock’n’roll cliché: “it’s only rock’n’roll and so on,” Sam grumbles repeatedly over brooding guitars and hypnotic synth hooks in this pressure cooker of a song – until it finally explodes.

The music video picks up on the beautifully weird aesthetic that has come to define Sam’s visual language while also charting new territory for the artist. Mirroring the monologic voice of an imagined audience in the song’s lyrics, the video shows a leather-clad Sam prancing and parading through an empty Zurich café, his own reflection being his only witness.

It’s been less than a year since his debut LP Power Ballads (a “well-crafted set of atmospheric post-punk” – KEXP) broke Sam Himself onto the international stage; few would blame the artist for taking a quick nap on his laurels, e.g. his first national album chart entry, radio airplay across Europe and the U.S. and two Swiss Music Award-nominations. Wasting time, however, isn’t part of the repertoire of the songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist, Sam recently announced the first leg of his European tour in support of Never Let Me Go, his upcoming second album, for early next year.

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