Samuel Jack made peace with a hit he never really loved

Talking through his life – and how he came to be nonchalantly announced on national radio – from his home studio, where he's been working on a track he'll pitch for an unnamed TV show, singer/songwriter Jack is as open in person as his vulnerable songwriting suggests.

Born in London to a film director father, his was a nomadic childhood. "My upbringing was all over the place. We won't go into that, but there are lots of different reasons. I was thrown around the place a lot when I was a kid."

That sense of movement would follow Jack into adulthood. One of the most pivotal moments involved him moving to South Africa as a preteen for a few years. It was here he became entranced by music, specifically Paul Simon's Graceland.

It was "Homeless" that struck him one day while playing football outside. With the record on inside, the sounds of Simon, and more particularly Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who features on the track, arrested the young Jack.

"I made the effort to walk into the house, go to the record player or whatever it was at the time, and find the record and turn it round and read who the hell was singing," he recalls.

From this point on he became a confessed "music dweeb", inhaling all he could as he entered his teen years. Across the spectrum from rock to rap and soul, Jack became an unapologetic student of his future craft. These influences now shine across his back catalogue, particularly the soul and blues his parents would listen to.

While he admits that the time between discovering music and starting to perform and write was "quite a long time," this in itself was the education he didn't know he was undertaking. "I was too busy chasing girls and playing football," he chuckles.

"I've always been a keen listener of music, and my parents loved music; there was always music playing in the house. I became excited about music when I was younger, but not excited enough to write it until I was nearly 20."

As Jack left his teenage years and entered adulthood, things fell apart. After leaving home at 16, he eventually dropped out of university and the early 00s found him doing stints as a chef in various pubs and hotels, which is how he also came to dabble in playing music. "I taught myself how to play the piano in the pub where I was working," he remembers.

From here, his musical career began in secret. Toying around on a little toy piano he purchased, he started writing songs that he professes now to have been "absolutely dreadful, like truly, truly awful"; it was always on the back burner until one fateful New Year's Eve.

In a lock-in at one of the pubs he was working at, his friend took up at the piano, and before he knew it, an inebriated Jack was singing The Doors' "Light My Fire". This would be his first ever public performance. "The only reason I did it, Steven, if I'm completely honest, was because I was just really, really pissed," he chortles.

Getting a good reception, particularly from his pal Joe, who took up the keys, nudged Jack a bit further toward his future calling. "That was the first time anyone heard me. They were like, Oh, who knew the chef could sing, you know? And that made me feel better about writing my silly little songs secretly at home."

"I think music did then become sort of an emotional outpost, something I could do to get myself through the things that we all go through as humans," he mentions when I ask if there was a change after this moment. "It certainly became a very cathartic thing for me in my early 20s." From this realisation, it began to snowball. "I started to do more of it and more of it," he says.

Eventually wanting to record what he was creating, he saved his money from his job and decided to head to a local studio. More than a calling, he saw it as a way out of the life he'd found himself in. "There was no North Star. I was just working in these pubs and a bit aimless, if I'm honest, cooking food and not really enjoying it."

It was at this studio that another important moment happened for Jack. He met his longtime producer Owen Thomas. "He's like my family now, but he was the first person within the industry already that sort of went, That's good, that's really well made, that song; you're not bad.' For Jack, it was confirmation that he was on to something.

"That was the end of the beginning for me. It was like, Okay, cool, you've started now, and off you go. My story's a long one, and I don't want to bore you, but a lot happened between then and now," he says.

The many years that followed were less glamorous, a cycle of working in pubs while continuing to write and record. Eventually he branched into touring and playing shows wherever he could – including opening the Avalon Cafe stage at Glastonbury in 2015. He then released his soul-soaked debut EP, Let It All Out, in 2016

Working consistently with the same crew, including long-standing co-writer Lily-May Young, Jack slowly began to build a fanbase of his own. The reality of where he was building towards came in a fortuitous trip to Belgium.

Recalling the trip fondly, he tells me: "I was on the road, and I was doing some support shows and doing some shows of my own. I did a gig in a windmill in Belgium, and we drove out in our beat-up old splitter van to this venue, not knowing what to expect at all. There was no town. People had to drive out there to this place, and eventually we played our first song, which was a song called 'Big City Love', and from the first note, the entire audience sang the entire song back pretty much word for word, pretty much. That was probably the first time that I really felt like the music was travelling and it was doing something."

That was Jack's life, slowly building something while still returning to work between tours to make ends meet.

Then, in 2021, everything changed. Not every song an artist writes feels like a statement. Some are simply experiments, moments of fun, things that happen to catch fire. "Feels Like Summer" was one such song. A standalone single, it was released in 2019. 18 months later, it found itself appearing across Instagram reels, and before he knew it, Jack was a viral hit.

"I was contacted by every single major record label on the planet – and I mean every single one of them; I spoke to them all," he says. Eventually he signed to Arista/Columbia Records. It was the moment when everything seemed to be happening for Jack. Then his father died.

Going through such life-changing events in quick succession was no easy task. "I ended up leaving the restaurant. I was dealing with the loss of my father, and also literally in the same days, no exaggeration, taking these meetings with these major labels who were interested in me all of a sudden because the song was such a phenomenon at the time, so that was wild." He'd go on to explore the emotions he felt in this time surrounding his father's death, most notably in the piano-driven track "Chat Dad" – in the moment it was dizzying.

Looking back, he describes this period as one where he began "plateauing in this odd detached space." What helped him through it was the same instinct that had carried him through his unsettled childhood: "In answer to your question, how do you move through those things? You just keep going forward, one day after the other."

Digging further into this time, he continues, "I felt a bit defeated; I was back to making ends meet and without being crass, you go, yeah, fine, I'll sign to you. And obviously, that comes with major label promises and certain things within that deal which are intricate, but I know now that they're not always the best things."

Naturally, his label wanted another "Feels Like Summer". But Jack wasn't so keen on the idea. "That song was written on a whim, and I'll be completely frank with you, it wasn't a song that I was super proud of," he admits. "It was like, Oh, we should write a little fun, summer thing, and it was written in about half an hour. We weren't really thinking much about it, and I didn't love it. I still love it for what it's done, but it's definitely not my best work."

Finding himself pigeonholed, what rocketed forward from here was a series of vignettes with Jack living the dream while trying to pinpoint his own artistic identity in a whirlwind of expectation.

"The irony is that along this adventure and me experimenting with different sounds, you also find the ones that you don't want to do, and 'Feels Like Summer' is pretty close to one of those that I didn't want to do," he chuckles. "It was really special, and will always hold a good place in my heart. But I'd like to not be defined by that song. That's the objective."

One Last Dance In The Valley is Jack's second record. It feels like the answer to that period of searching: It's a shining ode to his influences, while pushing that soulful edge into a brighter and more life-affirming sound, particularly on "California Sun", which rides a thick bassline as Jack rejoices in the beloved state that's been kind to him on this journey. Before this came his debut, The Gold & The Glory, of which he says now: "All those songs had been made up of a big long winding road, a journey over the years." It shows in its patchwork sound, not quite hitting the same euphoria that his latest radiates.

It's a sentiment he returns to throughout our chat. One Last Dance is a record that was a joy for Jack to make. He's built himself a space which has allowed him to fully focus on who he is, rather than living in the shadow of a throwaway song, and for the first time he gleefully admits: "I feel bad for saying it, but I just don't care."

With this homecoming of sorts, Jack feels like he's found his feet as an artist. He's travelled the world, writing songs with various masters of the craft; he's had songs syncopated for TV (where he's found a particular success), and survived various other label deals before landing back on his Landon Records where it all began – albeit a bit older and definitely wiser.

"I've done lots of stuff, in terms of the business side and know the brutality of it and also the exciting things of it," he says. "I've done big, huge shows, and I've done tiny little shows, I've cut my teeth and earned my stripes. I'm made up of all those tiny little experiences that have happened to me over so many years, and I think that sort of built me and made me into someone now that feels so confident and comfortable, and so ready to be like here's the record that I should have always made, there you go, take it or leave it."

The viral moment may have introduced Samuel Jack to a wider audience beyond his own organically grown one, but the only person who needs to know him now? Himself.