Sam

Album: Glasshouse (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Jessie Ware pays tribute to her husband Sam Burrows. She told Billboard magazine: "It's pretty great to write some of my favorite best songs about him now when we run out of conversations, we run out of gift ideas. In my back pocket, I've got a song like 'Sam' to offer him, and I'm pretty happy about that."
  • Jessie Ware and Sam Burrows first met at school when they were nine years old. They started dating nine years later and got married in August 2014 after he proposed to her on the Greek island of Skopelos. She co-wrote the track Tough Love track "You & I (Forever)" after he'd asked for her hand in marriage.
  • Jessie and Sam's first child, a daughter, was born in early September 2016. Ware was eight and a half months pregnant when she recorded this song during which she sings about her impending motherhood.

    And I hope I'm as brave as my mother
    Wondering what kind of mother will I be?
    I hope she knows that I found a man far from my father
    Sam, my baby, and me


    "I found it quite hard to record when I was pregnant because I think by the time I recorded 'Sam,' my belly was lower so I had more space in my diaphragm," Ware said. "I'm always worried about my voice because I think my voice is quite fragile."
  • Ware co-wrote the song with Ed Sheeran. The pair previously collaborated on her Tough Love track "Say You Love Me."
  • The track features the legendary Pino Palladino, who's played fretless bass on songs by Paul Young, Elton John as well as touring with The Who as the stand-in bassist for the late John Entwistle. Chance The Rapper's trumpet player Nico Segal and Francis from Francis and the Lights also contributed to the song.
  • Jessie Ware's TV journalist father John Ware divorced her mother when she was 9. The songstress told The Mail on Sunday's You magazine that she didn't intend the "Hope she knows that I found a man far from my father" line to be an attack on her dad.

    "It celebrates my mum and husband and explains a little bit about my past in a way I've never done before," Ware explained. "That line speaks a thousand words and it seems to be the line people are singing."
  • Before having her baby, Ware was providing backing vocals on Ed Sheeran's album Divide. It was Sheeran who pushed the singer into penning the "far from my father line." Ware said: "I asked him to look at the half-finished song and he encouraged me to be more explicit."

    After Glasshouse was released, Ware "felt guilty. I was like, 'Aagh, my poor dad.'"
  • How did Ware's father react to the song? She admitted: "He texted me to say, 'I'm really hurt', and I said, 'It's not meant to crucify you, it's just that you and Mum didn't work out. I've got a guy who hasn't had an affair.' But he's not a terrible person. There were four years when I didn't talk to him but, since the little one came along, we're in the best place we've been for a long time. He loves it when I send pictures of her."

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