Samantha Sidley @ The Green Room 42 - New York City Article

Samantha Sidley
The Green Room 42
570 Tenth Ave
4th Floor inside YOTEL
Thursday February 6 through Saturday February 8
For information and reservations, please click here:

About a dozen years ago, I had the pleasure of being one of the judges at a contest for young “cabaret singers” at the now-legendary Oak Room at the Hotel Algonquin, and I’m happy to say that I voted for the winner, a precocious teen named Samantha Sidley. Since then, Ms. Sidley has switched teams on several levels, she’s now an aggressively uncloseted queer artist (it’s a key element of her musical personality) and from traditional cabaret to jazz. Well, not exactly jazz, but that distinctive genre of pan-stylistic, vintage jazz / pop music hybrid fueled by distinctive original songs, the approximate musical domain of Nellie McKay and Kat Edmonson, not to mention the carnivorously sexual attitude of Storm Large. “I Like Girls” may well be Ms. Sidley’s equivalent of Ms. Large’s “Eight Miles Wide,” an anthem of purpose that’s so insanely catchy that even we straight old bald dudes don’t feel embarrassed to suddenly find ourselves humming it. (There’s also a very entertaining music video for that one, but, alas, not for another tune on her current album, titled “Butterfly in my Ass.”)