Sampha’s debut LP Process releases on Friday, February 3 via Young Turks and leading up to it he’s released the new video for track “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano.” The song itself is beautiful as it touches on the British’s singer losing his mother to cancer in 2015. And after listening to it and watching the accompanying visual, which features British model Adwoa Aboah looming as the only other presence in the scenes besides the singer and his piano, chances are those lucky to still have their mother in their lives will want to pick up the phone just to say “thank you.” It’s inescapable to feel that way as his sobering vocals and the melodic keys do so much to stir up the emotions in a way that’s similar to another classic ode to a lost parent, Luther Vandross’ 2003 tune “Dance with My Father.”
It’s such a brave, honest track because it comes from the very real circumstances that changed Sampha’s life after he decided to move back home to take care of his mother in her final months. “I wrote that song when I had moved out for a couple of months to east London to record,” Sampha said in a December 2016 interview. “I had moved out of my mum’s house, and she got told that the cancer which she had had for four and a bit years, was terminal, so I had to move back home. I moved home and the song just came to me really. It’s more a metaphor because the piano is my mum’s home.”
For anyone who can’t get enough, there’s also a 360-degree VR version of the video that released as well and can be seen below.
