Sam Tompkins successfully fights the impulse to hide with Hi, My Name Is Insecure, his debut full-length album out now via Republic Records. The 16-track record chronicles his evolution from a 16-year-old Brighton boy busking for enough cash to buy a hat into a universally beloved man whose voice can’t be quantified in material value.
This April, Tompkins opened on the European leg of The Kid Laroi’s The First Time Tour, and he experienced the reward of allowing himself to be visible — giving others the opportunity to embrace him.
“Every night, before ‘More Than Me,’ I would belt out a note,” Tompkins told Uproxx of the soaring Hi, My Name Is Insecure track about his love for someone else overriding his chronic self-loathing. “It is a big ascending note that lasts a little bit, and I would always try to count the seconds. It’d always be on the fourth or fifth second when people would start cheering. Every night, without fail, it was always on the third, fourth, or fifth second, the crowd would cheer. When you’re the support act, you aren’t always lucky enough to have everyone’s attention. But for that little second, they made me feel like the headline act.”
People have been hanging on Tompkins’ every word for years. His visceral emotions coat every song, even covers like “To The Moon” with JNR Choi, which charted internationally. In August 2021, Justin Bieber — Tompkins’ idol-turned-friend — shared Tompkins’ single “Whole” to his Instagram Story, unprompted, and called it his “new favorite song.” Subsequent hits “Lose It All,” “Numb,” and “Time Will Fly” cemented his unique star quality. Still, Tompkins struggled to believe his worth — nearly giving up countless times.
Hi, My Name Is Insecure opens with the delicate title track, in which Tompkins sings of hating parties and wondering if he “wants to be here anymore.” With closer “Alone At The Party,” Tompkins satisfyingly brings it full circle, singing, “You’re alone at the party / But at least you left the house.”
In between, Tompkins sings so lovingly of other people. “Thank God You Talked To Me” is about how he met his partner, Lily Knott, another viable UK singer-songwriter. “Phones In Heaven” took on new meaning after his late father, John Tompkins, died by suicide last November. He contends with self-sabotage being in direct conflict with selfless adoration on “Almost Killed Me,” “All My Everything,” or “Then There Was One,” and he bravely shares his body dysmorphia on “See Me.” The vulnerable undertone is a resilient pursuit to join the rest of us in viewing him as the headliner. Whether he can see that just yet is secondary to his courage to try.
Below, Tompkins opened up about how writing Hi, My Name Is Insecure helped him heal, what he wishes people understood about body dysmorphia, and why he released this album in honor of his dad.
I took a quick scroll to the bottom of your Instagram and found you had captioned a video from April 2022 with, “hi my name is insecure,” and that must not be a coincidence. When was the seed for this album’s title and concept planted in your brain?
Well, I wrote this song at my flat in 2021, I want to say. I was sort of freestyling, like I do with my songs on my guitar at home, and I just came up with the line, “Hi, my name is insecure.” That song ended up being a love song, but the title really stuck with me. I hadn’t heard someone say something like that before, and I was trying to figure out what that meant during the process of writing my album. But I did think in the back of my mind, This might be my album title. As I wrote my album and got further and further into the process, I realized that, actually, a lot of the songs are coming from quite an insecure place, whether that’s within myself, body dysmorphia, issues with how I look at myself, or perhaps in relationships. The title came first, and then songwriting sort of — what’s the word? Prophesied itself.
Can you recall when you became conscience that you might be more insecure than your peers?
Honestly, I think when I got into any intimate relationships with people was when I realized that maybe there’s a problem. I had this inner hatred within myself that started when I was about 11 or 12 — maybe earlier than that. In the changing rooms for P.E. at school and not wanting to take my top off until everyone had finished. I sort of lingered around until everyone had finished and gone home or gone to their next lesson. But as I got older, it became harder. In relationships, it took a while for me to take my top off or whatever. It’s the opening lyric of my song “See Me”: “I’ve never been confident / Never wanted to take my shirt off in front of girls.” That was how I realized that it was an issue. There have definitely been phases throughout my life where I’ve seen that it’s been harder to integrate into certain situations because of how I view myself.
When did you realize that singing helped you feel better about yourself?
I wrote a song called “Follow Suit” about my friend who’d passed away, and I felt an instant sense of relief after I posted that. I was writing songs a little while before then — maybe I started at 16 — [but] I felt like I’d made something special out of something so raw for me and really sad that sometimes I can’t even talk about. So, making something positive out of something negative. I realized then, Oh, maybe this is my purpose for music. To write stuff like this because it definitely helps me. And if I put enough feeling into it, it’s hard to deny it for other people. If it’s so my feelings and my thoughts and my emotions, no one can really invalidate that. They have to sort of respect, at the very least, that I’ve poured my heart out. I tend to feel like the best music is the stuff that’s the most honest and true.
Speaking of “See Me,” how do you set aside private self-loathing to serve up your deepest vulnerabilities for public consumption?
I’ve always been quite an open book, though not necessarily about this particular topic. This has been one of the more taboo things in my life, but I guess I got the courage for songs like “See Me” through little bits and bobs of therapy, counseling, or life coaching. When I started talking about it and just saying it out loud rather than just keeping it inside — saying it to someone and having them just listen and perhaps give me tools to make me feel better — I felt like, Oh, maybe I’m ready to write a song. It was more to just write it down, to be honest. I was given a task by my life coach to write a letter to a certain individual who had been a part of the catalyst towards my problems with myself and my body. Instead of writing that letter, I decided to write a song, and that’s how “See Me” came about.
What do you wish more people understood about body dysmorphia and body shaming?
God, this is a good question. I’m very particular about how I say stuff about this subject. I think people should read up on what it actually is and get to know how it makes a person feel. For me, my biggest thing in terms of body shaming is when you say something to someone one time, it only takes that one time. There’s this amazing song by someone called Victoria Canal that really makes me feel seen. The lyric for her song “Shape” goes, “Once, somebody said my nose looks small from the left side of my head / So, that’s what I post on the internet / All it takes is once, some kid in math class likens you to a bus / And that’s it, body dysmorphia.”
I wish people realized that someone says something about you one time, and it lasts for your whole life. You can’t get rid of it. It could ruin someone’s perception of themselves. I wish that kids knew that and were taught that rather than just “don’t call people names.” I wish there was something you could instill in a child that would make them have the emotional intelligence of their older self, because a lot of people look back and realize that they were like that when they’re younger. I’ve definitely said things to people and been nasty at times when I was younger and vice versa, and I wish there was a way that we could just teach children to be mindful of how each other looks at themselves. I just wish there was a way that I could get everyone on the same page on that.
I know I couldn’t answer this for myself, but where do you think that inherent discomfort in your body came from?
I was a classic active child. I loved to play football and run around loads. I had so much energy, and I naturally had that silly, skinny boy — you know, when you’re a kid, you have a little six pack? I had that. And then, you get to an age where you start hitting puberty and putting on a little bit of weight, which is natural for anyone to do, really. I think I started seeing myself as this version of myself, which wasn’t true because I was used to looking a certain way, and I started looking another way. I constantly wanted to feel like what I looked like when I was younger. And that doesn’t happen. Your body changes, and it is almost like, now, I look back at when I was 20 or 21 and go, I wish I looked like that. I’m constantly chasing my younger self, I think. That’s sort of at the epicenter of it all.
In “See Me,” you sing about feeling like you owe your kid self an apology because you thought you’d have more figured out by this age. Do you still struggle with these arbitrary timelines we give ourselves, or have you relinquished those expectations?
Honestly, writing this album has helped me do that a lot. I used to live in fear of, oh, if I don’t have this worked out by the time I’m 21 or if I don’t get to this point in my musical career by the time I’m 26, I’m going to be a failure. I’ve realized that none of that’s real. Historically, musicians always think that they’re running a clock. To a certain degree, back in the day, maybe that’s how it worked. Maybe it was a young person’s game. But I think people now are sort of breaking the mold for what’s popular or commercially valid. People can be any age and still be able to create amazing music.
As time’s gone on, society has helped me realize that these goals that I set for myself when I was younger aren’t necessarily as realistic or as healthy as I thought that they were. As you get older, you go through things, and you have to allow yourself to make mistakes and be a human being. If you don’t make this one goal, it doesn’t mean that you totally failed. It just means that you are still trying to achieve something, which is still success in itself.
Very few people get to meet childhood idols, let alone become their friends and peers. Has coming to know them as people, having first-person proof that they are just human like you, freed you from the comparison trap that most of us fall into?
Yes, in a lot of ways. It’s funny. When you meet people that are ultimately really, really heavily successful people, and they’ve been to the top of the mountain, they always say that the best part is to climb. That’s almost impossible to appreciate when you’re doing it. Maybe you’re getting beaten down, and you’re taking two steps back, or you’re taking three steps forward but never know which way you’re going to go.
I guess it’s freed me from the comparison thing, but I’m human. I slip into that all the time, and social media exaggerates that. I have constant lapses. But it has made me realize that no amount of this or that is going to maintain your happiness for you. You have to do that by looking after yourself.
More importantly, I imagine the high from achieving your lifelong dream of having a debut album is in direct conflict with the bottomless grief from losing your dad to suicide last November. I simply want to ask you how you’re doing.
It’s tricky. I mean, it was just Father’s Day, and it was my first without him. Honestly, I wish so much that he was still here, obviously, but I also wish so much that this album wasn’t due to come out now. I wish that maybe I could have been able to deal with one thing at a time because it has been really difficult, and everyone around me would tell you that as well. What people don’t mention about when you lose someone [is that] there’s a lot of stuff that happens afterwards that you have to deal with — a lot of logistical stuff that’s really hard to compute.
If I had it in my own way, I’d love to have appreciated this album release and be able to put my all into it. But then, “my all” is always relative anyway to whatever I’m going through. If it hadn’t been this, it would’ve been something else. It’s never a nice time for you to lose a parent. It always sucks bad. But at the same time, it has been a really good distraction. Writing this album, promoting this album, getting the vinyl out, [planning] the tour, it’s all something to look forward to, which, at this time, it’s quite hard to look forward to things because you are constantly looking back at all the things you did have. So, having that perspective of like, Okay, there’s a future. I have a future. My father’s not here anymore, and that sucks and I’m dealing with that, but my future is still in my hands. I’ve got this beautiful album that I love very much that I had written and recorded before he passed that I now owe myself and owe him to get out into the world.
Has there been a recent message from a stranger or one of your “Samwich” fans that caught you when you needed an encouraging word the most?
I mean, every day, I get something nice sent to me. This goes long before anything bad happened in my personal life, and I was just living my actual life. But recently, it’s been more special. My fans and my community of people are always just checking in. One thing that really lifted me up — I think it was maybe a couple of weeks after my dad had passed. Someone sent me a video of their kid wishing me the best, and this kid was like three or four. The parent had definitely told them what to say, but it was just so sweet. Having people think of you and keep you in their thoughts is really nice because everyone’s got their own sh*t. When someone stops from their sh*t to check in on you and your sh*t, then that’s really cool.
What is your greatest hope for the impact you can have moving forward?
It’s the saying that I live by these days: “A problem shared is a problem halved.” Whether it’s said out loud or you’ve written it down, the load of that problem becomes a little bit smaller. You’re not just carrying it internally constantly. And if you said it to someone else, then even better because that person can check on you. I guess that idea of communal support, supporting others. Once you let go of some of your own problems and help someone else with theirs, it might actually help you with your own problems, you know what I mean? That’s what I’d want people to get from my music. Talking about how you feel is just so important to me.
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