In June 2018, folk-flavored singer-songwriter Sam Robbins stepped onto a Hollywood soundstage and sang Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” as his blind audition for The Voice, the NBC music reality competition. None of the season’s coaches—Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Jennifer Hudson and Kelly Clarkson—picked the New England native, who performed throughout the region when not in class at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he impressed someone: He was selected for the first iteration of the show’s online “Comeback Stage,” in which a handful of castoffs compete to return to the main competition. He ultimately suffered the same fate as another Voice contestant, Calista Garcia, unfortunately.
In the years since, Robbins has continued to hone his craft, releasing two albums and, with fellow folkie Halley Neal, a Christmas-themed set. “The Real Thing,” the latest single from his forthcoming So Much I Still Don’t See album, shimmers like the soft-rock staples found on SiriusXM’s 1970s channel—or the ’70s singer-songwriter CDs his dad played in his pickup truck during their weekend excursions to New England’s White Mountains.
The song began life where many such songs start: on the road. He’d finished one gig and was leaving for another when the sameness of what he was seeing hit home: “I’m sailing smooth highway under soft suburb lights/where an Applebee’s oversees every corner.” The character once unique to every town and city across America has given way to a sad sameness. Soulless chains push out mom-and-pop stores and eateries, much as the corporate hegemony that runs the music industry has bumped originality in favor of mimeographed marvels. “The Real Thing” is a wonderful song that tackles something many of us worry about, in other words.
The Old Grey Cat 
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