“Open up and talk about how you feel,” singer-songwriter Sam Tompkins tells Apple Music. “It's okay to be open, especially men. It's okay to talk about how you feel, because you never know when it's the last time you’re going to talk to someone.” On a debut of sparse and vulnerable leftfield pop, Tompkins takes his own advice, singing about suicide, drifting apart from a lover and dealing with cyberbullying. Let the Brighton musician take you through his heart-wrenching songs, track by track. Follow Suit “This song is about a really close friend who took his life and the thoughts and feelings I have about it. When I'm recording—with this song in particular—I didn’t want to record it with a smooth voice; it didn’t make sense. I wanted to be able to listen to the emotion in the song, to the point where you might not be able to hear the lyric but if you don't hear the lyric, you can hear the emotion, and that's all that matters. And then people connect to those songs because it's like, wow, someone's actually doing that for once.” You Broke My Heart So Gently “This song is about a relationship I was in that lasted a couple of years. Towards the end it fizzled out and we became friends, but it took us a long time to recognise we needed to step away and be our own people. Sometimes in a breakup where there's no one to blame, it’s harder. One day, she came to me and said, ‘I think it's best if we call it quits.’ And I didn't want to fight anymore. I wrote it three or four months after when it hit me how much of a friend I'd lost; that was what I was upset about.” Wishing Wells (Talk) “Here, I’m touching on mental health and asking, would people care if I was gone? The one thing I feel very, very passionately about is men feeling comfortable enough in their own skin to say what's actually on their mind or getting them down.” Critical “People are so critical online when they can't see the face of the person they're damaging. It's so easy to say whatever you want, but you've got to remember that can ruin someone's day—or even life—reading things like that. Actually, that’s the thing about social media: We're not all grown-ups. We've got kids using social media that need to learn they can't say whatever they want because they don't know who they're affecting. It’s about helping people understand.” Faded (feat. JayKae) “At the end of the year, my label has a roster for how many listens we have, and my music was at the bottom. JayKae commented something like, ‘How much do you want to bet that Sam will be at the top next year?’ I remember thinking, ‘Wow, JayKae knows who I am.’ Then we messaged and I showed him this song, which he loved, so he jumped on it. He's a great artist. Probably my favourite rapper in the UK, so I’m really pleased to have him on the project.”