Sam Gellaitry Just Wants to Soundtrack Your Life

But in hindsight, “Assumptions” going viral aligned with Gellaitry’s career. It locked in a return to the sonic identity he created. And it provided the blueprint for Anywhere Here Is Perfect, a 12-track record built around the shimmering, futuristic electro-pop sensibility that first appeared on that breakthrough song.

"Obviously it's not on the album, but a lot of the songs are in reference to that sound,' he says. 

When he started producing as a teenager, Gellaitry was an experimental producer turning out beats that blurred trap, electronic, and hip-hop. He rarely sang, imagining his debut album would be stacked with features while he handled production. 

“But then I finally put out ‘Assumptions’ in 2021, which was basically the first time anyone had heard me sing, and it was a complete 180 to what I was doing prior," Gellaitry says.  “I got good response from it, and then I just had so much fun songwriting that it basically just led me to this point where it was felt right to do the album.”

Timing, as Gellatry says often, was everything.

Emotionally, Anywhere Here Is Perfect is charged. Much of it orbits the rush and terror of love, from falling into it to running from it and analyzing it from afar. Sonically, it feels like stepping into a neon-lit arcade where there are glossy synths, bouncy claps, disco edges, glistening guitar riffs. Tracks like “Start Up a Rumor” crackle with energy, while “Nervous” hits the brain like a gentle jolt of electricity. It’s the rare album you initially stream casually only to realize halfway through that you should’ve bought the vinyl.

For Gellaitry, the goal was to make the album feel like a coming-of-age movie: nostalgic, glowing, and emotionally honest. He cites Dazed and Confused and the entire John Hughes universe as inspirations. Even Mystic Pizza makes the list. But the clearest reference point is Before Sunrise, the inspiration behind “Love on Me.”

“Some songs have ended up becoming relevant to my life, like I'm predicting what's going to happen to me," Gellaitry says. “The majority of the songs are focused on relationship things, and a lot of it is basically the fear of committing to someone, but also some of this isn’t even about me; it’s like in third person.”

The album’s title sprang from an everyday scene of someone getting out of a car when dropped off at their ideal place.

“I just felt like it was my time to use it as a metaphor," Gellaitry says. “I've been on a journey for a while. If I'm to say ‘anywhere here's perfect' in a car, I'll basically be leaving the car and then starting my night. Starting a new journey whilst also ending another one."

Despite imagining a feature-heavy debut in his early years, Gellaitry ended up making an album almost entirely alone. He’s the producer, the singer, and the writer, only recently opening up to the idea of using an outside mixer. There’s only one guest, in Toro y Moi, the artist who inspired Gellaitry to start singing in the first place. They met at Camp Flog Gnaw a couple of years ago, stayed connected, and eventually swapped stems virtually for the song “Curious.”

“I'm not really collaborative in general, so it wouldn't be a true reflection if it wasn’t centered on my production, my writing," Gellaitry says of the decision to be the only cook in the kitchen. “But I just had Toro on it, because Toro is the guy that made me start singing, and it was kind of a statement to me to just have him on the album.”

What’s even more unexpected (and yet completely logical in hindsight) is the role Mk.gee played in shaping the record. He’s not on it at all, but after hearing Mk.gee’s 2024 album, Two Star & the Dream Police, it became a kind of creative companion for Gellaitry, something he lived with while working on Anywhere Here Is Perfect. Where Mk.gee, real name Michael Gordon, dug into the hazy R&B and rock textures of the ’80s, Gellaitry felt an urge to respond by leaning harder into the dance side of the same decade.

“I did have some stripped-back stuff, and I did want to lean into an R&B side a little bit,” Gellaitry says. “But when he put his album out and he did it in that way, I felt like he was really leaning on his strengths. I needed to do the same in terms of making it dance centered—like, go back to my roots of Daft Punk and French house.”

All of this—the Toro y Moi anchor, the Mk.gee spark that pushed him further in electronic music—loops back to a bigger truth about the moment Gellaitry is releasing this album into. Dance music is rotating back into the center of culture. And to Gellaitry, this ebb and flow feels familiar, almost predictable. 

“I think there's a kind of recurring theme where rap will have a huge forefront, and then it will go back to dance, and then probably rap’s gonna come back again, and then it'll probably be dance again,” he explains. “It happened in, like, 2010 to 2014, ’15, where things were so EDM-, dance-music-centered. And then, pretty much, 2014, 2015 to probably the last two years was completely, like, trap, rap music in the mainstream.”

The pull toward dance isn’t limited to producers.

“Even a lot of rappers, especially in the UK, I’ll send them beats and they were like, ‘Nah, I want the dance stuff,’” Gellaitry says. "A lot of people want to transition into dance—there is a shift.”

His earliest work, beat-heavy, trap-leaning instrumentals Gellaitry produced as a teenager, was the gateway for his career. But his foundation was always dance.

“I love both genres, so I'm happy with the change, because it’s kind of aligning with where my output is as well,” he says. 

Gellaitry just wrapped a run opening for Kaytranada on his recent tour, a fitting moment considering how much Kaytra’s own genre-shifting catalog informed the ecosystem Gellaitry is now stepping into. Next year, he hopes to take that energy further by adding more shows and festival appearances. And as his audience grows, he’s thinking less about chasing hits and more about building the kind of slow-burn relationship he has with the albums that shaped him. 

“I basically just want to soundtrack people's day-to-day lives," Gellaitry says. “My favorite albums have been albums that have lasted three or four years in my life, like Boo Boo by Toro—I listened to that nonstop for, like, three years. I listened to the Mk.gee album when it came out pretty much the full year. Listened to the Oklou album that just came out for the full year. I want to be like that for someone else—have people sit with the album and live with it for a second."