Written by vocalist Courtney Love, The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and music producer Linda Perry, "Samantha" was originally planned as the album's lead single.

Directed by Pablo Ganguli and Alphan Eseli, it was Hole's first music video since "Be a Man" in 2000 and is set in a post-apocalyptic world with Love wearing a wedding dress with the word "cunt" embroidered on it, burning dollar bills.

"Samantha" is one of twenty-six original songs that Courtney Love wrote following her six-month lockdown in rehab in September 2005 after violating drug probation.

It was during these sessions that the song was described as what "[led] to the resurrection of Hole" and in June 2009, Love and guitarist Micko Larkin announced the band's reunion.

As on Hole's "Celebrity Skin", Billy Corgan composed the main guitar riff to "Samantha" whilst rehearsing with Love at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles.

Corgan's lead guitar recording, originally featured on a studio version of the song, was omitted from the final mix by Love and replaced with a cello.

"[9] Hole's music attorney, Peter Paterno, has since called Corgan's block as "an unlitigated issue" and "suspects the law would favour Love."

The band also performed "Samantha" at the NME Awards on February 24, 2010, alongside Nobody's Daughter's lead single, "Skinny Little Bitch" prior to the album's release.

Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork Media described the song, as well as others on the album, by stating that "the guitars are so dated, raunchy, and overstated that every track starts to feel like cartoon-rock-- more a Sunset Strip-rehash than grunge nostalgia"[13] whereas Allan Raible of ABC's On the Record referred to it as "a classic Hole track, until it devolves into a repetition of the lines, “People like you f___ people like me, in order to avoid agony.

[19] Alongside the announcement, Love also posted a number of pictures from the video shoot on her fashion blog, What Courtney Wore Today.