Tyler Ballgame, Madison Cunningham, and more feature on new Johanna Samuels album, Sorry Kid

Sorry Kid follows previous albums Excelsior (2021) and Bystander (2023), with "Circles" being the third preview, arriving after earlier singles "White Limousine" and "Two People, the Moon". The track features vocals from singer-songwriter Tyler Ballgame as Samuels explores patterns within the human experience.

Speaking about the song, Samuels explains: "This is another song off the record that I wrote when I was 20 and living in New York City. I was deep in a round of my evergreen study of Elliott Smith's music and had been obsessed with the infinity symbol and the Schoolhouse Rock number Figure 8. Being the stoner that I was at that time I found it all to be quite profound. I was reflecting heavily about how we can all feel so much and numb out at the same time, how we can make beautiful music and gather in community and also have war and violence. I hoped (and still do) that there is an underlying kindness and a goodness at the bottom of it all; that love and honesty win in the end.

"Playing it again after all these years I hear that the song is about the idea that we are all tiny little universes of self experience and that we can only take in so much truth at a time... it sometimes feels like experientially our 'Eureka!' moments are much like the axis of a figure 8. "A circle that turns 'round upon itself." It repeats again and again so we can learn and grow. It just takes time and as much open heartedness as we can muster."

Sorry Kid was recorded directly to tape and produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty, The Killers), with additional contributors including Courtney Marie Andrews, Erin Rae, and more. The album serves as a message to her younger self, and ends a chapter with songs gathered from across the last two decades.

“I think about how much has changed since I wrote these songs, and I know that releasing them will finally close the stitch on a chapter of my life that taught me so much," Samuels says of the album. "If these songs began as questions, they arrived as resolutions rather than answers."

Sorry Kid artwork

Sorry Kid tracklist

"White Limousine (feat. Courtney Marie Andrews)"
"Rare (The Runner Song) (feat. Madison Cunningham)"
"Circles (feat. Tyler Ballgame)"
"Blue vs. Pinkerton"
"Two People, the Moon"
"Full Story (feat. Jordan Lehning)"
"Bats (feat. Erin Rae)"
"The Kind One"
"Grade 11 (Sorry Kid) (feat. Erin Rae)"
"Do What I Can"
"Indelible Within Her"