Out now: Shamir’s “I Love My Friends” (Official Video), alongside the digital release of his final solo album Ten—or, as Billboard puts it, "the mercurial multi-hyphenate’s excellent, indie rock-infused new album…"
The project that arrived on the 10-year anniversary of his debut album Ratchet, is a love letter to the friends who have shaped Shamir’s life—10 songs written by those closest to him, made from unused demos and castaways given new life. Artists like Grant Pavol, Like St. Joan, Poolblood, and more are featured in the video out today for “I Love My Friends.”
Originally written by Andrew Harmon, the album’s opening track serves as a mission statement. With anthemic sincerity, Shamir delivers lines about the steadfastness of friendship through grief, growth, and change. Harmon wrote the song after the death of his father, and yet, in Shamir’s hands, it feels eerily tailored to his own arc—one of the album’s many moments where someone else’s words seem to unlock something deeply personal.
Despite the personal distance, Ten may be the most revealing album in Shamir’s catalog. By surrendering authorship, he achieves something closer to clarity. The album feels, in many ways, like a document of survival. Over the past decade, Shamir has navigated a music industry that has never quite known what to do with him—fluctuating success, industry indifference, and, at times, outright hostility. Ten is, in contrast, an exercise in love. It is a reclamation of music as a shared language, rather than a performance of self. |
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