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SASAMI on going from metal to pop & dedicating songs to ‘sad and horny people’ in the crowd

There are two separate entities of SASAMI: the all-caps, swagger-packed music artist blending pop and rock music, but also to be factored in is the past life Sasami Ashworth, a conservatory-trained French horn player and classical composer. But, as Ashworth tells Headliner, these two selves converge on her upcoming third album, Blood On The Silver Screen. Described as the “all-out SASAMI pop record”, Ashworth talks about its huge singles, creating the record, and why she often dedicates these new songs to “sad and horny people” at her gigs.

Ashworth joins the Zoom call in a jovial mood, joking, “I’ve sent my AI proxy, so you’re actually having a conversation with AI right now. Humans are irrelevant now!” Growing up and based in Los Angeles, she comes from a Korean and Japanese family. “I’m in London, and as good as one can be in London,” she jokes, and it’s tricky to ascertain if she’s still joking or actually firing shots at the capital.

Ashworth completed her music studies at the Eastman School of Music in 2012, and upon graduating worked on orchestral arrangements for films, studio albums, and commercial work, while also teaching music around Los Angeles. Before making the decision to fully commit to the SASAMI solo project, she played synths for Cherry Glazerr and toured with the band for the best part of three years.

Ashworth then reveals how the rigours of touring her last record, Squeeze, and the vocal strain she experienced, ended up playing a role in how she would approach creating her 2025 record.

Squeeze was written during the pandemic and recorded during the pandemic,” she says. “I then vigorously toured and vigorously performed it as the world was reopening in a really aggressive, cathartic way that was physically satisfying but also unsustainable. At the end of touring that album with the metal band that I was playing with, my vocal cords were struggling.

If you want any sort of future of singing, then you need to scream less.

“If you want any sort of future of singing, then you need to scream less. So that was the impetus for writing an album that was much more song-based, because Squeeze was mostly written instrumentally first, and then the lyrics and vocals were tied into the instrumentals.”

But practical considerations aside, Ashworth is clearly a music artist who is chiefly concerned with creating a body of art with her albums above commercial considerations — how else would you logically explain the pivot from a record that required a touring metal band to this pivot into a pop sound palette?

Blood On The Silver Screen opens with Slugger, a brilliant introduction to the wonderful pop direction Ashworth has taken on this record. The Robyn-esque pulsing synth intro goes into a verse and chorus that are stunning to sing along to, while the singer is almost brutally self-deprecating.

While Ashworth is usually a typically self-critical artist, she says that Slugger is, “A perfect song. From an academic standpoint, everything about that song is a perfect pop song. I'm the most critical person of myself, more than anyone. But as an artist, certain ideas and things come out of you, and you're like, ‘Oh shit, that's good’. Some songs even take you a while to understand. And Slugger definitely was a song like that where I was very intentional in writing that song. I wanted to make a major key song, a song that has very repetitive chords, where the chorus intentionally has this octave lift in it, and I wanted the lyrics to be self-deprecating, to have a sense of humour.”

Growing up in the more indie, post-punk world, it felt like if anything seemed poppy and cheesy then people would turn their noses up.

The album, and the exploration of pop music territory in particular, is an exercise in vulnerability. With Ashworth’s previous, more indie-centric albums, and her past in the world of bands and classical music, she is keen to speak on why musicians should feel no shame in proudly wearing the pop badge when it feels right to.

“I have a really sensitive cheesy meter,” she says. “Growing up in the more indie, post punk world, it felt like if anything seemed poppy and cheesy then people would turn their noses up. And it's interesting, because I think it's actually a fear of vulnerability. Guilty pleasure is actually just fucking pleasure. The guilty part is this weird human-invented shame element. Which is just like, why? I think it’s also just me getting older and realising that I think I just have enough cool points to get by on now.”

If anyone was hoping the following song might have more upbeat lyrics in the way a more radio and commercially-oriented pop song might, they will be disappointed. Just Be Friends opens with the fairly savage, “I hate myself for loving you the way I do / I know that it’s bad for my health for trying to turn this into something new.” Yet, these lines are paired with delicious guitar chords, vocal melodies with light notes of country twangs, and a drum machine beat to bop your head to.

This is the song that Ashworth dedicates to, “Anyone sad and horny in the crowd”, and she says the song is a “really grown up continuation of themes/moods from my first two albums”. On the country music inflections, she adds that “I love how country songs often tell a story. Longing, lingering, loneliness and lust.”

And, while the music of SASAMI sounds completely modern and contemporary and not in the slightest bit outdated, it turns out she has a surprising method when it comes to listening to music around the time of album writing. A method that is partly about creativity, and partly about avoiding any unwanted legal troubles.

Guilty pleasure is actually just fucking pleasure. The guilty part is this weird human-invented shame element.

“I have this weird rule where, when I'm writing music, I don't listen to any music that was made within the last 20 years,” she explains. “I'm just too paranoid I'm gonna accidentally plagiarise it. So I ended up listening to a lot of early Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, and Kelly Clarkson stuff from the 2010 kind of period. So I feel like there's a lot of that influence. 

"I think that era of pop was transitioning into everything being digital and not tape anymore. And some of those samples and like electronic sounds are kind of terrible, but I kind of like it. It's funny, because in the past, I've been quite ultra-focussed on the production. On this album I was way less production-focussed, and more leaning into some of the trashy, cheesy choices.”

The other single the album has yielded is Honeycrash, which contains the line that yielded the album title, “Like blood on the silver screen”. While Ashworth’s vocals still follow the album’s pop sensibilities, it’s one of the heavier moments on the LP — the guitar and drums are sounding comparatively huge on this, a rare moment of headbanging on this release.

Ashworth is currently in that strange space of time between announcing the album and its eventual release date, the 7th of March. But she’s way too busy to stop and twiddle her thumbs until it drops.

I don't listen to any music that was made within the last 20 years; I'm too paranoid I'm gonna accidentally plagiarise it.

“I feel like artists these days have to tour every second that they can to make a living,” she says. “So I’ve just been on tour since I finished the album, or making assets for it. I don't really have the time or space to be freaking out about anything. It’s more things like ‘Oh, I have to get a box of merch to Manchester’. That's where my brain's at, day to day operations.”

Ashworth signs off with the importance of letting an album go upon its release, so to speak. Not obsessing over all the things out of her control such as how it's received, and even how well it does, to a certain extent.

“It feels so cliche, but once the songs start coming out, they don't belong to anymore. They belong to the world. You have to let go in a way. I think it's really unhealthy to obsess too much over how it gets received. My job is to make the best thing that I can and then once it gets released, I just hope that people can relate to it.”

Main image: Hannah Baker

Second image: Miriam Marlene

Third image: Andrew Thomas Huang