Rising artist Samantha Lindo releases her captivating AA-side single ‘Like Family / Shades of Yellow’ today.

Her most poignant release to date, lead single ‘Like Family’ is oozing with Samantha’s soul-tinged splendour from the offset. Years later – after her grandparents came to the UK in the late 1950’s – Samantha’s grandfather took them on a trip when she was a child to find his old childhood house on an old sugar plantation. The song is based on a moment, a strong memory, of seeing him cry as they found his old house in ruins. “My grandparents’ family life had been complicated and it was almost as if I watched all his childhood and adult memories and feelings, weaved between continents and centuries run across his face at that moment.As one of the first black Anglican vicars in the UK, he used the language of accepting our ‘human frailties’. The inheritance from him I want to nurture is the willingness to hold paradox, forgiveness and grace for ourselves, others and the world, rather than the tempting tendency to judge, condemn and tear people down.”

‘Shades of Yellow’ sits within the same thematic frame-work as ‘Like Family’ and was written to flow straight from its ending. Channeling the likes of Kae Tempest and Self Esteem, Samantha uses spoken word to match the power and emotion of the song’s origin, which emerged from a conversation with Samantha’s dad. “It was provoked by him noticing a picture of me that I had hanging in my kitchen as a little three year old girl, naked on a yellow bike, with yellow glasses on a summer afternoon,” Samantha elaborates. “The track echoes subtle reflections on the effects of trauma, generational divides and the connecting back to the innocent desires of our inner child. “Sometimes art is often a powerful way to express and name what’s been handed down, and in turn that is part of healing it and stopping the cycle”.