Music video: Samara Smith may have done something with "How do you sleep?" and I'm a bit shocked

When I saw the teaser for Samara Smith's new song "How do you sleep?" and I saw choreography, I was intrigued. Because...I just was. Because she don't dance. But occasionally Samara pops up on my feeds, and over the past few years she's been losing weight, feeling her queer oats, wearing heels and women's clothes. So, I thought 'Okay. She's might actually do something with this'. And a bitch did. And I'm kinda flabbergasted, because I've never liked a single thing that Samara has done and now I done gave a bitch 99p for a download of this new single and I've watched the music video multiple times.

"How do you sleep?" is and a nice switch of gears for Sam, who is primarily known for slower more mid-tempo jams. His collaboration with Calvin Harris and his duet with Normani makes his direction with this single less of a shock. We now see this was potentially what he was building to. And it works. It really fucking works.

"How do you sleep?" is produced by Ilya Salmanzadeh, Max Martin's right-hand man, who has been enjoying a steady roll-out of work ever since booking Ariana Grande's My everything. Ariana is whom most of his production discography sits with, having worked on the Lion's share of Dangerous woman, Sweetener and Thank U, next. Most recently he scored big by co-writing and producing Beyonce's contribution to The Lion King soundtrack, "Spirit". So needless to say, he's riding one hell of a wave.

My only one snag with "How do you sleep?" is that it suffers from something that I find many of Ilya and Max Martin's recent productions suffer from. The common thing with all of Ilya's contributions to Sweetener was that every song sounded like it was missing a verse, a bridge or a middle 8, and it's the same deal with "How do you sleep?" It just...ends But, it's still a solid song and Ilya is still one hell of a talent. The production on the song is fire.

I've never been a fan of Sam and have never liked any of his music. But even so, it's nice to see him in a place where he feels comfortable owning his queerness in a way we've not seen him do before. Maybe it was fear of it hurting his career early on. Or maybe he just wasn't there yet. But it's nice to see. And if this new direction is one Sam continues to venture on, then I might just have to keep my ear out for this new album.

And the music video was a serve. Looks. Choreo. All of it.