SPOTLIGHT: William Prince - "All The Same [VIDEO]

Editor's Note: William Prince is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for October 2025. Learn more about his new album, Further From the Country, in this deeply personal essay and stay tuned for more from Prince all month long.

"All The Same" might be a "late bloomer" of a song off William Prince's new album, Further From the Country. It's an arresting song even on first listen, as he sets the scene in a calm baritone that belies intensity: " I had a good friend / Life cut short by his own hand / Everybody but his old man / Seemed so surprised."

The song is both an origin story and a tribute to life and community on the Peguis First Nation reservation in what's now considered central Manitoba. As Prince says, the song is about "growing up in a community where self-inflicted loss of life is a common occurrence because of...the ongoing effects of the colonization. It is the persistent intergenerational trauma that holds people in a very difficult place."