In 2002, before arenas and festival stages, Sam Roberts found himself in a far humbler setting: the basement of a friend’s parents’ house. It was there that he recorded what would become The Inhuman Condition, the breakthrough EP that would launch his career.
“You never know where these moments are going to take you,” Roberts recalls, looking back on those formative days. At the time, there was no grand plan. He was simply trying to make sense of his own feelings. “In no way can you predict that this is what will happen,” he says, still amazed at how those early tracks became something much bigger than he imagined.
What started in that basement quickly grew into one of the best-selling EPs in Canadian music history. The success happened almost overnight, propelled by word-of-mouth and a music scene still built around the tangible act of buying albums.
That whirlwind rise came at a time when Roberts himself was still searching for meaning, both as an artist and as a person. The songs on The Inhuman Condition were snapshots of someone working things out in real time, not declarations from a polished, established voice. Perhaps that raw honesty is what allowed listeners to latch onto the music so quickly.
Looking back, Roberts sees the EP not just as the start of his career, but as a reminder of the unpredictability of creativity. What began as an experiment in a suburban basement ended up opening doors he never knew existed, paving the way for the decades of music that followed.
© 2025 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Ad Choices