VIDEO PREMIERE: Sara Niemietz Unleashes Smoldering Soul-pop on “I Want You”

“This album is about vulnerability and empowerment. It’s about speaking your piece, shaking off the past, and finding the superhero inside,” shares singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actor, Sara Niemietz. She continues: “As a kid, I used to run around with this blanket tied around my neck and call myself ‘Super Sara.’ This is a return to that, and it’s my most representative project to date.”

The LA-based creative polymath’s fourth album, the indie rock Superman (due out October 28th), represents a reinvigorated era in her artistic continuum born from small vulnerable moments brought on as a result of lockdown, and seismic, non-pandemic life changes. The album is also a showcase for a fresh collaboration with co-writer and co-producer Linda Taylor, the ace guitarist on the hit ABC show Whose Line is It Anyway.

The pair met fortuitously on Sara’s last gig of 2020, a showcase with Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown, and just three days after their meeting the world shut down. Sensing an intuitive chemistry, Sara and Linda began to collaborate, tossing wildcard musical ideas and playlists back and forth.

The twosome quickly found themselves nurturing a signature blend of soul, sonics, and story with emotive vocals and prominent guitars. Some of their artistic touchstones included Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Janis Joplin, Brittany Howard, early Kings Of Leon and D’Angelo.

The resulting album is a mosaic of soulful sounds, spanning sensual blues ballads, smoldering soul, snappy jazz-pop, and indie rock. Thematically, Superman grants privileged access to Sara’s life before and during the pandemic, much like the pages of a journal set to music. The 14-song album explores tumult, triumph, the freeing feelings of starting new chapters, and resilience.

Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for “I Want You,” the second single off Superman. The lively tune fuses bluesy and soulful vocals that are immediately infectious with clever songwriting and the right amount of attitude. There is a bouncy funk undertone to the music that keeps things bouncing along as Sara unleashes punched up vocals. We also get treated to unexpectedly dreamy harmonies during the bridge that segues into a cranked up finale.

Sara describes the inspiration behind the song and video:

As soon as I listened to the final mix of “I Want You”, visuals started forming in my mind.

I approached this video cinematically – thinking of it as a scene in a film, rather than a more traditional music video.

Shot on the Metro and in various locations across Los Angeles, “I Want You” is all about desire, yearning, motion. What better place to capture that than LA?

Eddy Navarro and Alex Nester, the same team from my video “Locks”, joined me and made the vision come to life. I then took their footage, and edited this music video to tell the story.

Linda Taylor adds her own perspective on the track:

Sara sent me this “germ” as we call them, about a year ago…I found her original email, almost a year to the date actually.

She tends to the understated when she sends me something, ‘you know, see if you like it’, which is hilarious because I stopped pre-listening a long time ago. If she sends something, we’re working on it, period. No decision to be made. Send me stems immediately, this is what’s on the table.

I knew Sara’s range of course, but I don’t think I heard her power prior to this. This song, this vibe was so raw and real and she was just letting go, peeling the paint. I Want You really gives the album it’s center. I felt like, okay, now I’m seeing the corners and the edges, I’m finding the frame of this album, I know where we’re going. We’re gonna slam this and you’re gonna scream and I’m gonna play like 2 notes for 3 minutes.

Sara’s original demo had the monster bass line, the song’s shape and scope, then she hinted at one chord which made me think, you know, we could veer off and have a brief moment of something else. The middle section, “look what you’re doing”…gave her a point of reflection and a nice weird soft gauzy spin. Of course we don’t want to be gauzy and soft for long, so back to her scream (I actually timed her outro yell at about 18 seconds) and my 2 notes.

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