Sam Austins: “That viral moment saved my life”

Sam Austins’ rise hasn’t been straightforward. A period of houselessness followed his isolated teenage years, while label rejection forced a rethink – hardships that have shaped the contours of his uncompromising avant-pop. Then, Seasons went viral – and a new chapter was written.

Growing up, music was inescapable for Sam Austins. Alongside the regular airings of Sade and Michael Jackson that filled his childhood, there was another influence that came from closer to home. His father, Harold Bonhart, is a pianist and vocalist who performed with revised line-ups of iconic Motown acts The Spinners and Four Tops throughout the 2000s and 2010s. “It’s insane – I had an MPC when I was, like, two years old,” Austins laughs. “It’s like gumbo pie – a lot of stuff has fallen in there,” he adds, describing his omnivorous musical upbringing. 

We’re sitting in an east London cafe where Austins, either conscious of his vocal cords or on a health kick, is sipping green tea and honey. It’s his second visit to the UK, and the first time he’s been able to soak in the capital for more than a couple of days. It’s just one of the opportunities that have come from the fortuitous experience of blowing up on TikTok last year with his single Seasons. With his all-black fit and understatedly confident aura, onlookers might assume he’s a creative director or some other fashion-adjacent figure. But he’s here on musical business, spending his days in sessions with producers and nights Ubering around the city, tucking into its food scene.

Among the topics of conversation is his zillennial upbringing on Tumblr. At 13, following his father’s departure, he and his mother moved from the city of Detroit to the suburbs of Southfield, before he returned after high school to devote himself to music. He describes his childhood as “lonely” and recounts frequently feeling misunderstood in his surroundings. “I was the perfect example of a kid who always had this feeling of loneliness. I always thought I was being ostracised, even if I wasn’t,” he explains. “When I was alone, I would seek out art to not feel so alone.” Obsessed with rare fashion finds, streetwear, art and film, he learned from an early age to follow his own creative fascinations rather than concern himself with the opinions of his peers. “I was always dressed like ‘the weird one’ – everyone else was wearing Michigan State University hoodies and listening to Top 40.”

Listening to the 29-year-old’s varied back catalogue, it’s no surprise to learn that his experiments with musical hardware began as a toddler or that he spent his teens mainlining Tumblr references. Starting out, he toyed with alternative R&B, while his first fully fleshed-out project, the 2021 mixtape Homeless Star, dealt with his experiences of houselessness – couch-surfing and sleeping in the back of his car for a year in Detroit, before moving into his aunt’s attic – through an avant-pop lens. Since then, he’s tried out everything from indie sleaze, as on his Strokes-inspired 2022 single Dancing With the Devil, and psychedelia, showcased via his 2023 EP Boy Toy. Ultimately, Austins isn’t precious about genre, but notes that pop is perhaps the most reliable container for his creative fluctuations. “I look at my different projects as different chapters, bringing in different influences on a musical journey. It’s not straight, on-the-nose traditional pop, but at the end of the day, it’s pop music – it has pop hooks and isn’t so avant-garde that it can’t be played on the radio,” he explains. 

His most recent project, The Woods, Vol. 1, is his most experimental yet. Across confessional asides and switchy delivery, his distinctly sensual, textured falsetto skirts over propulsive instrumentals that feature everything from pacy footwork beats (Smoke Break), to funk-inflected guitar (Hot Like You) and stark piano (River Stream). He’s also working on a remix EP, inspired by techno and his lifelong affinity with Detroit. But he freely admits that his admiration for techno came later – not during his own coming of age in the Midwest. “I’ve gotta be honest about this, when it comes to my upbringing in Detroit, I was around a lot of people that made hip-hop music,” he says. He admits to being less of a techno purist and more of an admirer of artists who can connect the dots between electronics and a variety of other musical styles. “I was around the Bruiser Brigade and the Danny Brown crew a lot, who are obviously so inspired by electronic music and could see how to bridge the gap,” Austins adds. Partly, this eclectic approach to club sounds stems from his experience of the nightlife scene coming later in his artistic development. “I was in the suburbs early on in my life. When I got to move over to Detroit and was of age, I got to see the nightlife lifestyle, but I wish I’d seen it at its peak.”

Austins is most in his element when discussing his process, from collaborating with Hundred Waters’ Trayer Tryon on a live setup he describes as “a lot of energy, like a party”, to learning to produce and getting closer to his creative vision than ever before. But his personal life – specifically the hardship of going independent after he parted ways with Atlantic in 2023 – infiltrated The Woods, Vol. 1 in myriad ways. “I had a very hard 2023. I went through a breakup, I left my last label and went independent, I was broke in LA, which is so expensive, and I got into credit card debt. I just couldn’t catch a break. It was a spiral and I was so scared of fucking things up to the point of no return.” He notes that he was also going through the famously challenging Saturn return – an astrological transit that marks the shift into fully formed adulthood. “There was a point where I was so devastated by how difficult being an adult can be. I almost named my project Afraid of Saturn Return. I was very grateful to make it to 29 – at one point, I thought I was destined for the 27 Club.”

His life now is substantially different, catalysed by the success he’s found online in the past 18 months. Seasons, an earworm of a song that sounds like hyperpop meets Dev Hynes, has changed his life beyond recognition, bringing him greater visibility after years of grinding away. The most surreal part of the experience? Not only did his former label pass on releasing the track and its follow-up (though they did partner with him to distribute The Woods, Vol. 1), but Austins never set out to chase virality. “I’ve never really been successful at this social media thing until very, very recently,” he explains. “I wasn’t a fan-facing person. I was an ‘if you know, you know’ artist for a long time. When I found my moment with social media in the last year and a half, a lot of people around me were like, ‘Fiiinally, this is happening for you.’”

Austins hopes that his own online success can mitigate some of the cynicism other artists may have towards the TikTok hype machine. “This song wasn’t intended to be a thing for social media. I think that’s really inspiring because it shows that actually innovative shit can see the light – these platforms can be used for good, too.” While he is healthily sceptical about the ways online clout can end up pigeonholing artists, Austins sees this moment as an opportunity to convince new audiences of what he’s capable of – a lifeline that arrived when he needed it most. “I’m very grateful. Even if people are like, ‘viral this, viral that, viral, viral, viral…’ that viral moment saved my life.”