One of the most compelling voices in music today, award-winning songwriter Sam Ashworth brings both pure intuition and uncompromising vision to everything he creates. In his latest triumph, the Nashville-based musician joined forces with repeat collaborator Leslie Odom Jr. for the co-writing of “Speak Now”—the quietly powerful closing song to acclaimed feature film One Night in Miami, which promptly earned Ashworth his first Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award nominations and drew widespread buzz as an Oscar frontrunner for Best Original Song. Having landed his first cut at the age of 17, Ashworth has spent his life building a kaleidoscopic and increasingly vibrant career: along with co-writing hits like H.E.R.’s Grammy Award-nominated Top 40 smash “Hard Place,” he’s produced records for an eclectic range of artists (including his wife, singer/songwriter Ruby Amanfu), released four solo projects, lent his background vocals to songs by superstars like Norah Jones, and served as a session player on countless tracks across all genres.

Born in California but mostly raised in Nashville, Ashworth grew up in the studio thanks to his father, Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer Charlie Peacock. After getting his start playing drums at the age of five, he saved up the cash from his lawn-mowing gig and bought a used bass at age 13, soon adding guitar to his repertoire. Ashworth’s innate musicality came in handy around the house, with his father frequently calling him into sessions at the studio he’d set up on their property. “I was sort of like a Swiss Army knife for my dad,” he recalls. “He’d be producing for someone and come get me to sing or play guitar on a song or whatever else he needed, without any warning. It taught me to be ready for anything, and do my best to deliver no matter what.” At the same time, Ashworth was becoming more and more infatuated with songwriting, mining inspiration from artists as diverse as Al Green, Brit-folk poet Nick Drake, and alt-pop pioneers XTC. Within years of penning his first song, he came up with “I Won’t Stay Long”—a Nick Drake-influenced reverie that ultimately made its way onto Sixpence None the Richer’s platinum-selling pop debut.

Following the breakout success of his first placement, Ashworth expanded his wheelhouse to include production work, and at age 24 scored his first Grammy nomination for co-producing Christian-music legend Michael W. Smith’s gold-certified 2004 album Healing Rain. While continuing to work on his own material and play shows around Nashville, he laid the groundwork for his co-writing career by collaborating with a number of indie acts, and soon signed a deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing. As he sharpened his craft and gained recognition for his genre-transcending sensibilities, Ashworth cultivated an incredibly varied songwriting catalog. Previously signed to Downtown Music Publishing and now with Universal Music Publishing, he’s handled everything from country-pop and Americana to R&B and dance music—all while turning up as a background singer on albums from the likes of Dierks Bentley and Brett Dennen. In the mid-2010s, those worlds collided when Ashworth co-wrote and appeared as the featured artist on “Hooked Again” (an album cut from Laidback Luke, EDM icon and mentor to the late Avicii) and on Rui’s “Million Times” (a 2016 Dutch Top 40 hit co-written/co-produced by Afrojack and released on his label).

A particularly meaningful project for Ashworth, his collaboration with H.E.R. yielded nine of the songs gracing the tracklist to the R&B artist’s critically praised 2019 album I Used to Know Her. Those contributions garnered him an Album of the Year nomination at the 2020 Grammy Awards, in addition to the Song of the Year nod for “Hard Place” (a gold-certified hit that also won the BET Her Award in 2019). “‘Hard Place’ is special to me for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it’s the first song my wife and I wrote together for another artist,” notes Ashworth, whose recent work with Amanfu includes a track on Rag ‘n’ Bone Man’s forthcoming Life by Misadventure.

Arriving in January 2021, “Speak Now” marked another major milestone for Ashworth, both creatively and professionally. At the request of esteemed music supervisor Randall Poster, he joined several other songwriters in vying for placement in the end credits to One Night in Miami—the Regina King-directed account of a fictionalized meeting between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke (portrayed by Odom, who would serve as vocalist on the closing song). “I watched the film and immediately felt an enormous weight,” says Ashworth. “The movie’s essentially a conversation about racial injustice that still very much applies today, and my goal was to get the song to a place I completely believed in before presenting it to Leslie.” A friend of Odom’s and co-writer on four songs from his 2019 album Mr—including “Cold,” whose 2020 update featuring Sia emerged as a Hot AC Top 40 smash—Ashworth eventually shared a demo with the Tony Award-winner, then began collaborating with him over FaceTime. “Because Leslie had spent so much time becoming Sam Cooke, I really needed his perspective on what the song should be,” he says. “After that I wrote and rewrote it a few more times and sent him the last demo, and he called me right away and said, ‘I got chills’—which was all I needed to hear.” A beautifully understated yet urgent track centered on Odom’s soul-stirring vocals, the final product has since won a number of critics’ awards, in addition to nabbing the Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song.

As Ashworth reveals, the rigorous process behind writing “Speak Now” reflects the strong sense of conviction that guides all of his output. “Whether I’m working with an artist or writing on my own, I always want to find the absolute truth in what we’re trying to get across,” he says. “In songwriting it can be very easy to settle, but I’m passionate about doing everything I can not to create more noise or fluff—especially at a time that’s oversaturated with the recycling of beats and lyrics and chord progressions. My compass is pointed toward doing better than that, and always asking myself, ‘What’s the purpose of this song? Why should this song get the chance to live?’ At the end of the day, I want to feel that I’m a part of putting more good out into the world.”