Sam DeRosa Offers a Track-by-Track Breakdown of ‘The Medicine’

You may be familiar with her or have heard her name already – Sam DeRosa was on the Charlie Puth episode of NBC’s Songland, signed to Sony/Monument (multi-grammy award winning producer, songwriter, and longtime Kacey Musgraves collaborator Shane McAnally‘s label), appeared on the Kelly Clarkson Show, and was initially known for co-writing the hit song “Broken” for lovelytheband.

She recently reappeared on Songland to sing a song for Bebe Rexha on behalf of a new contestant. Her most recent songwriting credit includes “Be Happy” released by Dixie D’Amelio earlier this summer.

Suffice it to say, DeRosa is not as ‘new’ as some may otherwise think.

Her EP was released recently (it is available on your favorite streaming service) and DeRosa wanted to give a track-by-track to for her efforts to readers of American Songwriter.

1. “Unfinished”
I think ‘Unfinished’ was written the fastest on the whole EP. I wrote ‘321’ and ‘Unfinished’ the same day. The idea of the song was just kind of getting in your car and getting ready to drive the long road that was the closure of ‘The Medicine’. I really wanted it to start the whole EP and I knew that I wanted to touch on this idea that maybe this is what it is. Maybe we are just meant to be open-ended and there’s no ending, and there’s no reason for that?

2. “321”
‘321’ is a really fun vibe for the EP, and it really needed that because I think the phases of a breakup for me are a lot of ups and downs. ‘321’ was written about being all dressed up and ready to go out and live your best life, and then you find out your ex is gonna be at the bar down the street that you were planning to go to. It was kind of this emotional spiral of all the thoughts I’ve always wanted to say, and they came out in this really really fun song. I’m really happy that that one’s on the EP.

3. “Pill For This” (Uptempo) 
‘Pill For This’ is probably the craziest story behind a song because I had full intention of pitching it and giving it away to somebody else and nobody wanted it. Then I went on NBC SONGLAND and Charlie Puth told me I should keep my song and tell my own story. It ended up changing my life. Really that song is about this idea that there’s no medication you could take to just snap your fingers and just stop thinking about somebody, and in this specific moment I wanted so badly to just stop the world and start over, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about this person and this situation, and the song kind of wrote itself.

4. “Sad Faces”
‘Sad Faces’ was written shortly after I got off of NBC SONGLAND. I felt like I had gotten everything I’d ever wanted, and I’m in LA and I’m living my life and everything looked really good on Instagram. I was just mentally feeling like a disaster. I felt like I needed to properly put that into writing, because I over-immerse myself in the self-help world of podcasts and books and audio books and I didn’t feel any better – I actually kind of felt worse. So, I needed to write this one non-love song to talk about the internal struggles that you go through when you’re finding yourself again after a heartbreak.

5. “The Medicine”
‘The Medicine’ – not that I have any favorites – but I think that this might be my favorite one on the EP. It’s the most book-ending way to wrap up this whole saga. I’ve always wanted to write a song called ‘The Medicine’, but I didn’t realize that it would end up being a part two to ‘Pill For This’. But, this whole body of work is meant to be the start to finish of my journey to closure and surviving a breakup, and finding myself. With ‘The Medicine’, what I love is that the first verse is a true story and all those lyrics are true, and it felt really nice to kind of just totally pour myself out into that song, and that’s what made it the title track of the EP. Even though it’s the very last song, it just feels like the perfect way to put a bow on it, accept what it is, and move forward. The Medicine is you.

6. “Pill For This” 
See track 3 blurb.
🙂