The Long Road to Sid Seth’s “Precious Gift”

Sid Seth didn’t exactly choose music. He kept finding his way back to it.

Born in Ahmedabad and now splitting his time between Ahmedabad and New York, Seth went on to study at the Manhattan School of Music, eventually finding his footing as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His musical world stretches from John Mayer and George Michael to Adele, Sam Smith and Amy Winehouse, but the connection between them is pretty simple: he likes music that feels real. The kind where you can hear the person behind it, rather than just the person performing it.

That probably explains why “Precious Gift” feels less like a song Seth decided to write and more like one he eventually had to come back to. He wrote the chorus years ago, while his mother’s health was gradually declining. At the time, the words were there, but he wasn’t ready to sit with everything behind them. After she passed away, he returned to the song. Suddenly, those old lines had somewhere to go.

The rest of the track came together between New York and India. Seth recorded most of it at his producer’s home studio in New York, but somewhere along the way he felt the guitar wasn’t quite there yet. So he joined a Zoom session from India and recorded the guitar groove that ended up staying on the final version. The actual recording took only two or three days. The song itself had been sitting with him for years.

Even the artwork comes with a little history. Seth found an old photograph of his mother and photographed the photograph itself, wanting to keep some of the rawness that caught him in the first place. He knew the story behind the image, and that was enough to make it feel right for the song.

“Precious Gift” came out on September 18. The recording took two or three days. The chorus had been waiting for years.