The Art of Letting Go

Some records are made despite everything. Samuel Smith’s The Art of Letting Go is one of them.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2020 at age 44, the London-based singer-songwriter has spent the past five years finding ways to keep writing as the condition slowly took away his ability to play guitar. The result is a Nashville-recorded album, produced by two-time Grammy-winner Matt Rollings and featuring some of the most celebrated names in American roots music, held together by the kind of hard-won clarity that can only come from having faced something you can’t outrun.

The album was recorded with a constellation of musicians, including dobro master and 16-time GRAMMY winner Jerry Douglas, GRAMMY-winning banjo pioneer Alison Brown, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and guitarist Bryan Sutton. Vocal trio Tiny Habits, singers Jonatha Brooke and Glen Phillips, and jazz guitarist Julian Lage also appear.

When Smith lost the ability to play guitar — the instrument he had long relied on for songwriting — he turned to emerging AI tools to shape and share musical ideas with the musicians around him — humming melodies into his phone, uploading lyrics, and entering prompts for instrumentation and arrangement.

“It is no exaggeration to say that AI saved my songwriting,” says Smith. “I wouldn’t have completed this record without it. It’s showing me the extraordinary potential these tools have to expand access to creativity — to help millions potentially to the other side of a river they may feel they can never cross.”

The Art of Letting Go began as something more intimate. “This record began as a very personal attempt to leave something behind for my two sons — a collection of songs they could hold onto,” Smith reflects. “It has grown into something I could never have imagined — a gathering of musicians whose generosity and belief in my music has been overwhelming.”