He could write a song with his new piano…
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[5.50]
Will Adams: It’s still there, in the corner of the living room. I don’t know if anyone has touched it since I last visited. When no one else was around, I would play. The minuets and preludes had fallen out of my fingers — I can still hear my teacher telling me, “Be diligent” at the end of our sessions — so I improvised, or I played pop songs, or I noodled around an idea I’ve had in my head. I’m home less and less now; my MIDI keyboard offers a slight substitute. The pianos at my university were scarce and often in public places, so I never wanted to play them. The piano in the living room was for being alone, for creating moments only I could keep. One time I noticed that the B below middle C had gone flat, and it bothered me for weeks (“This wouldn’t happen if I were still around”). Last year, I came home and saw that it had been turned around — now the keys faced the corner instead of being open to the rest of the room. Last month I found out my teacher had passed away. One time I drew out a multi-octave chord and held the pedal down, letting the notes ring on forever. The overtones flowed in and out, filling the room. I took my hands off the keys and placed them in my lap as the chord lingered. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll forget, like I did the études and sonatas, how to play altogether. It’s a passing fear; I owe my teacher, myself, and my piano more than that. When I go home again, it will be there for me, as it always was.
[9]
Ryo Miyauchi: The missing parenthesis of the title is “in my mother’s home.” It’s the place where everything begins and ends for Sampha; the memories from it are what gives life to this otherwise typical ode to his beloved instrument. Though the touchy subject excuses the lack of details, I wish a bit more could be disclosed about his home since it’s what the song is about more so than his piano.
[6]
Hannah Jocelyn: When I first heard this, I likened it to one of my dad’s favorite songs, Billy Joel and Ray Charles’s “Baby Grand.” Both are about the piano being there when it seems like no one else will understand, the instrument functioning as a sanctuary for both artists. The two songs are graceful tributes in their own ways: stylistically, Joel to Charles himself, and more literally, Sampha to his mother. The piano isn’t merely a framing device, though — he does acknowledge that playing gave him comfort, or what “some people call a soul.” It’s ultimately a tribute to his childhood home, where he went to take care of his mother as she was dying of cancer. What really makes the song heartbreaking is the chance she may not have heard it; according to a Fader story about the album, “He thinks she might’ve heard the song, but she was so sick towards the end, he’s not sure that it registered.” That explains the raw anguish and pain in his voice, but it really is love above all else that drives his lyrics and performance, hoping that it will be enough for his mother to hear how much she meant to him.
[9]
William John: I cannot imagine the wretched, endless dolour that must arrive with the loss of a parent. Both Sampha’s parents have now passed thanks to that devil incarnate known as cancer; his father when he was nine, and his mother only two years ago, not long after his name was appearing on Drake records and in BBC Sound Of… lists. His tribute is as much mournful elegy as a panegyric celebration of all she meant to him and the love and warmth she was able to provide. There’s pride in his voice amidst the teary chords, and the strength and memory he draws from his childhood instrument is palpable. This is the sort of ballad that in other hands would be drippy, hackneyed, and probably quite commercially successful; it’s Sampha’s delicacy and poise which save it from becoming too overwrought.
[9]
Cédric Le Merrer: Blame TV talent shows for making me impervious to this kind of things forever. Still, it’s better than yet another “Hallelujah” cover.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Nobody but his piano knows him because only the piano knows the pedestrian melodies he coaxes from it.
[3]
Mark Sinker: The piano in my mother’s home is now at my sister’s house and my niece plays it. She should practice more really, but I’d still rather listen to her than this.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: Nobody knows you like you don’t know the key my dude, fuck a piano keys, keep your hands and your garbage ass singing to yourself. What is this vibrato and back of the throat thing? This isn’t SOUL Sampha, what the fuck you know about SOUL? You were the back-up producer when SBTRKT was too busy to return calls. Just because Drakk knows about making being an irritant into an art didn’t mean you were deep, you weirdo. The nerve, breaking out a choir, wait-!? A CHOIR OF YOU!? YOU THINK YOU CAN HARMONIZE!? You couldn’t find harmony if you were cast in Kids 2, stop the bullshit. Stop putting reverb on shit, stop doing this quail-with-its-neck-blown-to-bits warbling. Go back to your mother’s house and do some chores right now, because she doesn’t need to be brought up in your nonsense. “No One Knows Me Like the Piano” LAME-ASS NOBODY WANNA KNOW YOU BECAUSE THEY HEAR YOU SINGING AND THINK YOU’RE SOME KINDA CREEP, STEP OFF. OUT HERE BOTHERING POOR PIANOS, WHAT THAT PIANO DO TO DESERVE THIS?!?
[1]