Sam Haft: Songwriter and Recording Artist, on Building Music That Resonates
Please introduce yourself, what you do, why you do it, and what you want people to know about you.
Howdy, I’m Sam Haft—a songwriter and performer. For the past nine years, I’ve been co-writing and performing as part of The Living Tombstone, as well as writing songs for the hit shows Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. My work has earned billions of streams and several nominations for major music awards.
What qualities make you different and unique from everyone else in the industry?
I honestly don’t think I am unique. I fully believe that anyone can learn to do what I do, given enough time and effort—and that success is largely a combination of luck and planning. I take pride in my work and my work ethic, but I don’t equate that with thinking highly of myself.
Describe THAT moment when you realized you wanted to do what you do now. Who did you tell first? What has it been like since that moment?
I discovered music as a teenager, but I spent a long time not wanting to make it my career. I was concerned that my passion for it would evaporate the moment I had to do it, rather than choosing to.
Through performing in a cover band in high school, street busking in NYC, and touring with comedy music, I always treated it as a passion, and over time, that passion gradually took over the rest of my life. There wasn’t a single moment where I could “tell” anyone I was pursuing this path, because I’d already been doing it for years. In many ways, I was the last person to realize it myself.
In fact, when I was heading off to college, my mom’s best friend sat me down and said, “You’ve found something you’re talented at. Please develop it,” and handed me a MacBook with GarageBand to take with me. Hands down, that was the most impactful gift I’ve ever received.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?
All of my biggest challenges come down to time management. The Living Tombstone is an internationally touring recording artist and, as such, it is a rapidly growing business. Running that business takes a tremendous amount of work and a significant amount of time away from making music.
Overcoming that challenge has required me to learn how to delegate, which is a skill I am still actively developing.
You’ve served as a composer, producer, and songwriter for both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss, two shows that have become massive hits with fans. What has it been like helping shape the musical identity of these series?
These are profoundly meaningful projects, and fans have a deep emotional investment in them, which initially I found very intimidating. As someone who spent a lot of time in online fandom spaces growing up, I understood that this work carried an enormous responsibility to those fans.
A musical is generally judged first and foremost on the strength of its songbook, so I had to not only meet or exceed the expectations of a huge, emerging fanbase, but also those of the show’s auteur creator, Vivienne Medrano, who has been bringing to life characters and stories that have existed in her imagination for, in some cases, 15 years or more. I am deeply grateful to Vivienne and to my Hazbin co-songwriter Andrew Underberg for their close creative collaboration over the years.
Over the past six-plus years working on these projects, my life has changed significantly. I can’t think about a song like “You Will Be Okay,” my first song for Vivienne, without also thinking about my one-year-old son and my anxieties around new parenthood. These songs are time capsules of my life, which has changed enormously throughout this creative journey.
These shows blend dark comedy and musical theater in a way we rarely see. How do you approach writing songs that advance the story while still standing on their own as music fans want to stream?
To me, dark comedy and musical theater are a natural pairing, if you know where to look. My favorite musicals include Bat Boy: The Musical, Assassins, and Sweeney Todd, all of which spend a lot of time in the realm of the darkly comic.
When it comes to storytelling through song, as long as you understand what the character you are writing for is feeling in that moment, you can do the writing equivalent of an actor’s Meisner technique: putting yourself in the character’s head and writing down their thoughts and feelings.
That kind of creative role-playing makes writing with Andrew Underberg feel like an improv game, and our attempts to entertain each other result in songs that do a great job of entertaining the shows’ audiences.
As for the songs’ streaming popularity, an under-discussed factor is time. When you only have two to four minutes to communicate an idea, your limitations force you to make your ideas clearer, pithier, and more focused, which the world of pop music has understood since the genre’s conception.
In many ways, the medium of animation, where every second is expensive, forces us to waste as little time as possible, resulting in songs that are rooted in musical theater in substance but adhere to the “all killer, no filler” ethos of pop songwriting.
As one half of The Living Tombstone, you’ve created music deeply connected to gaming and internet culture. What makes that intersection between fandom and music so exciting for you as a songwriter?
I know what I am about to say sounds completely insane, but bear with me. When I think about fandoms, I think about Shakespeare. So much of Shakespeare’s work contains textual and semiotic references to the shared cultural fabric of his audience: the stories and folklore they knew, the shorthands and social shibboleths inherent in the way they communicated, and so on.
Fandom is similar. As a creative, being able to write songs that exist within this lived-in tapestry of inside-baseball interests and references allows for a much wider palette of colors to work with.
When you’re writing a song for a project versus writing for The Living Tombstone, how different is your creative process?
The process for my outside songwriting versus The Living Tombstone is wildly different. The Living Tombstone’s songwriting process is an egalitarian partnership, much like my work with Andrew Underberg on Hazbin, but the similarity ends there.
If writing for Hazbin Hotel feels like a fun improv game, writing for The Living Tombstone feels like a profound therapy session. It is a soulful, personal, and methodical process, often taking easily ten times as much time per song, regardless of whether the song is about mental illness or a video game we like.
A huge part of that is my co-writer, TLT’s founder Yoav Landau, who is one of the most brilliant and authentic people I have ever met. He is perhaps the only person I have met with truly zero artifice, and in that way every song becomes a reflection of something real we are thinking about or struggling with.
On a technical level, Andrew and I both participate holistically across music, lyrics, and production, whereas Yoav and I have a much more defined division of labor. Musical ideas may come from either of us, but when it comes to production and hands-on composing, almost everything comes from Yoav’s fingertips, and when it comes to lyrics, almost everything comes from mine. There is something fun and traditional about our creative partnership, very Elton and Bernie.
What is career accomplishment are you most proud of thus far?
When The Living Tombstone’s song “My Ordinary Life” was certified Platinum by the RIAA, I got my first tattoo to commemorate it!
Where would you like to see your career in 5 years?
Five years ago, I never would have guessed where I would be today, so I imagine the next five years will be just as impossible to predict. I would certainly like to release another solo record or two, but my primary career goal will always be to ensure I can keep my family happy, healthy, and well taken care of.
Can you tell us about any other current projects our readers can look forward to?
You are actually hearing about it first: I am about to finally embark on creating a stage musical. I am both thrilled and terrified.
If you had to pick the TOP 3 people you’d want to meet that could take your career to the next level….who would those 3 people be?
I would love to meet Lin-Manuel Miranda at some point. I would also love to meet whoever at Disney would let me write a song, or several, for a Muppets project. I have no idea how we could meaningfully collaborate on each other’s careers, since we are in such different musical niches, but I am a huge fan of Mitski.
List the direct links/URL to your social media profiles or website:
instagram.com/samhaftmusic
tiktok.com/@funcomfortable
twitter.com/samhaft
