Sam Tompkins - Are We Gonna Sing?
Creative direction2026
The problem
Sam's music was built on emotional honesty but his visuals were a bundle of different directions with no meaning or consistency.
The fix
Over nine months with Island Records I built one world as truthful as the songs, inspired by coming-of-age films like Stand By Me and held together by a creative bible across nine physical formats, tour, stage and social.
- +1M
- new monthly Spotify listeners in six months
- 26.3M
- TikTok and Instagram views on Beauty Queen
- 1.7M
- album streams in the first 10 days
- Sold out
- the whole UK and Europe tour
The idea
Shot in Romania: four friends walking a railway line out of a village. The front and back of the record.
Social
Social content ran through every single and every week of the campaign: lyric clips, postcards from Romania and the Dolomites, bikes down country lanes. I shot and made a lot of it myself, hands on, often just Sam, a bike and a camera.
Music videos
Heated Seats, Body to Body and Beauty Queen: a car floating over a stubble field, four friends let loose in a wildflower meadow below the mountains and friends on old bikes down English country lanes.
Press
Press imagery for every stage of the campaign, shot wherever the campaign took us. Because I was there with a camera, a press shoot could happen anywhere: a meadow in Romania, a gravel drive with friends, a borrowed living room. Each roll-out got fresh pictures made inside the album's world, not in a studio.
Live performance
Sam at his best is a guitar and a crowd, or a guitar and a view. The album launch played out live in Pavilion Gardens and acoustic versions of every single were filmed in boats, fields and on railway lines.
Tour
The Are We Gonna Sing? tour across the UK and Europe and a secret show at Hoxton Hall, from the posters to the stage. The screen visuals for the JD x Coke Live From Brighton show at Concorde 2 sit beside the moment each one lit up behind Sam.
Identity & product
The marks, the singles and everything people could hold: the type logo and tree banner, single covers built like a scrapbook from the trip, the vinyl in black and Blood Records splatter, a merch range drawn from the album world and the website built around the artwork.
Beauty Queen, single artwork
Body to Body, single artwork
Results
- +1M Spotify monthly listeners in six months (1.33M to 2.39M)
- 26.3M views across TikTok and Instagram on videos using lead single Beauty Queen
- The whole Are We Gonna Sing? tour sold out across the UK and Europe
- 1.7M album streams in the first 10 days
- Spotify followers up 21% in six months
- Album launch month: +205K Facebook, +140K TikTok and +57K Instagram followers
- Heated Seats hit #1 on Spotify's Our Generation playlist
- Caught in the Middle on New Music Friday UK & Ireland on release day
Credits
- Creative director
- Will Beach @willbeach__
- Photography
- Will Beach @willbeach__
- Music video direction (Beauty Queen, Body to Body)
- Will Beach @willbeach__
- Music video direction (Heated Seats)
- Kid Apollo
- Label
- Island Records
- Island Records
- Tom Prideux
- A&R
- Jason Ngimbi
- Social & digital
- Jamie Skinner
- Management
- Nim Jani
- Toby Lefley
- Logo design
- Mihalio Andic
- Artwork design
- Dan Yates
- BTS photography (Beauty Queen)
- @hugo.dejonge
- BTS film
- @jackmorgan07