A lot has changed for Samara Joy over the past four years. Her self-titled debut album, recorded at the height of the pandemic, arrived in 2021 and positioned her as a next-generation leader in jazz. In 2022, she sealed the deal with her second record, Linger Awhile. Within a year, she was awarded both Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards. But Joy needed to a moment to slow down and take it all in. She didn’t want to lose sight of what got her there in the first place. On the latest episode of Rolling Stone‘s The Breakdown, Joy explains how she created the seven-minute opus “Piece of Mind / Dreams Come True” to keep herself grounded.
“Two years ago, I was releasing my second ever album, signing to a major label, experiencing life changes and career changes unlike anything I’d ever imagined,” Joy says. “And I took a lot of time to self-examine what my purpose was and what I wanted to do. If the moment of attention went away, would I still feel confident in who I am as an artist and feel like I have something of substance to offer? This album is what I have to offer.” “Piece of Mind / Dreams Come True” appears about halfway through Joy’s third studio album, Portrait, which arrived earlier this month.
“Everybody realizes one way or another that life is bound to change in ways that you didn’t expect and at unexpected times. And so this part of the song, in particular, is just asking the listener to self-reflect on when you find yourself in the midst of a troubling time, how do you cope?” she explains. “This song is the first time that I feel like I’ve ever actually expressed how I truly felt during the past couple of years, with all of these life changes and feeling like — even with everything changing around me — how am I going to keep myself centered? And the song is posed as a question for that reason.”
Joy found empowerment and encouragement through the record both lyrically and sonically, having built it out to its fullest potential with a core team of collaborators. “What I really love about David Mason’s arranging of the interlude section is his use of bass lines as just a part of the movement,” she says. “There’s always like a lilting groove, it’s something that I’ve noticed about him. I feel like it adds so much movement and color in that particular moment, in addition to the lush harmonies of all of the horns. It’s almost as if during this part of the song, I’m kind of building up the confidence and the hope and the positivity that I didn’t have at the beginning of ‘Piece of Mind’ when I was thinking about all of the overwhelming thoughts.”
The “Piece of Mind” portion of the record concludes on a cliffhanger, with Joy singing: “Sometimes you feel like giving up, but don’t ever lose hope. Just remember.” Remember what? She wasn’t sure — and that was the whole point. If she spent all of her time looking for the answer, she wouldn’t be fully present for the best parts. That sense of feeling grounded in gratitude emerges on the latter half of the song, “Dreams Come True.” Joy adds: “I shouldn’t be so focused on what’s overwhelming about this whole process that I miss out on what’s beautiful about it, so that’s ‘Peace of Mind’ and ‘Dreams Come True.’”
