How Sam Smith Found Their Voice - The New Yorker

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For decades, leaving the gender of one’s love interest unspecified was considered a queer artist’s best hope of commercial success. Even when the singer was out—as, say, Melissa Etheridge was when she released such hits as “Come to My Window” (1993), “I’m the Only One” (1993), and “I Want to Come Over” (1995)—their songs generally remained allusive. Exceptions such as Carl Bean’s “I Was Born This Way” (1977) and Jill Sobule’s “I Kissed a Girl” (1995), both of which charted upon release, were few and far between, and progress was hardly linear. When Katy Perry borrowed the title of Sobule’s single for her own breakout hit, in 2008, it was somewhere between a provocation and a joke.

Then came Sam Smith. In 2014, they released what would become the highest-selling début album of the decade, “In the Lonely Hour.” It earned them four Grammys, including Record and Song of the Year, for “Stay with Me”; the following year, they won an Oscar for their James Bond theme. Next was “The Thrill of It All” (2017), with “HIM” as its centerpiece. I remember listening to the chorus (“It is him I love, it is him I love”) for the first time in a quiet state of shock. Until that moment, I’d never heard a song by a mainstream artist that was explicitly about gay love.

Since then, Smith has only doubled down. Their 2022 single “Unholy,” featuring Kim Petras, is a candidate for the gayest song I’ve ever heard (“Mummy don’t know Daddy’s getting hot / At the body shop, doing something unholy”); it’s also Smith’s most successful, reaching No. 1 on the charts and winning them another Grammy. Their new album, “Hazel Eyes,” continues the trend with a collection of love songs, many of whose titles nod to earlier classics: “My Guy,” by Mary Wells, “This Will Be (an Everlasting Love)” by Natalie Cole. The track “Constant Companion” echoes “Longtime Companion,” one of the first AIDS films, which took its own title from the euphemism the Times used to describe the same-sex partners of those who had died of AIDS.

I recently sat down with Smith for The New Yorker Radio Hour to talk about writing requited love songs for the first time, what the global success of “Unholy” unlocked for them, and their still-evolving relationship to their own voice. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Take me back. I know you grew up singing around your house and with your parents, but what was the moment when you realized that it wasn’t just your parents being nice, that you actually had a good voice?

I think that the moment was... there’s this holiday-camp brand called Haven Holidays in the U.K., and it’s for affordable holidays, where you go and stay in a caravan park. And I went with my best friend Beth. I came out to her when I was ten—but she was also the person who kind of forced me to sing, because she was a singer herself. She loves singing. And there was a talent show for children at this holiday camp.

How old were you?

Me and her must’ve been nine or ten. And, if you won the talent competition, you won loads of tokens, so you could go get loads of sweets from the store—free sweets and toys. Me and her stood up together, and we sang “Hero,” by Mariah Carey. And I just remember being with her and just seeing the whole room kind of erupt afterwards. Then I went to another holiday camp a year later. I went and sang the same song alone, and I won an award for it at that holiday camp, and I started to basically sing to different rooms, different people, and just the response I was getting was crazy. It was a good time, but also always stressful for me.

Why stressful?

I’ve always been freaked out by my voice. It’s a freaky thing. I don’t feel the same way that people feel when they hear it. When I hear myself, I’m very critical. I’m very hard on myself as a singer. I come offstage thinking I’ve done a bad job and people are, like, That was the best you’ve ever sounded, and I’m, like, I’m so confused!

But, in recordings, do you recognize how you sound?

I do now, but it took me... I first recorded myself when I was thirteen. My first recording was me singing “When You Believe,” by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. I sang every single part by myself. When I went into the booth after recording it and they comped the vocal and I sat down and I heard myself sing, I burst into tears, because I thought it was the worst thing ever. I was, like, In my head, I sound so much better than that. And then what came after that was many, many years of me having this dysphoria with my voice and trying to hear the goodness.

I’m still critical at times, but this album I’ve made is the most in tune that I’ve been with my singing. I feel like it captures me entirely, and I hear me when I listen to it.

You’ve said that, when you were growing up, and particularly in high school, you would wear makeup and dresses and traditionally feminine clothing. But when you were introduced to the public on your first album, you were not dressing like that. Was that something you intentionally toned down?

No, it wasn’t an intentional thing. I moved to London when I was eighteen years old, and I had a homophobic attack happen to me, and it triggered me to start wearing less makeup when I was walking around the streets—because I used to wear so much. As I started to wear less makeup, suddenly people started to notice my singing more. And then my manager for that first album came on board, and he went shopping with me and encouraged me to wear this type of coat or that thing, and I would put it on and walk into rooms, and doors just started to open for me.

I still felt very femme in myself and my body. The suits I was wearing—it was drag for me. I was really enjoying wearing something different and not having to deal with everyone looking at you. You know, the negativity that would come with presenting as femme as a child, I was enjoying that not happening. But I think after my first album is when I was, like, “Oh, O.K., this is an identity now. People think this is me. And if I start dressing femme like I used to, that’s gonna be something that people have to be educated on.” And my album was so massive that the world stage on which I had to make that announcement just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

You grew up in a village with fewer than a thousand people. The stereotype is that that would be a less safe place to present feminine, that London would be a safer place.

Yes.

But that was not the case for you.

No—I mean, looking back on it, I was very brave, and I have a very strong mother, and I have a very emotional, strong, sensitive father, and they really just let me express myself. But people would say things in the village, for sure. I worked in the village store once, and there were crazy experiences there when I was younger. So, it wasn’t easy. But when I came to London it became dangerous. And that’s when I started to, I guess, tone things down a little bit for my safety.

And you were given subtle signals from the industry about dressing more masculine. Was anything explicitly said?

Yeah. I mean, as I started to transition forward—and, I guess, backwards—into wearing the things I wore when I was younger, and publicly wearing makeup, moving in a more femme way, that’s when I started to hear things within the industry, and people would say things. That was hard.

What would they say?

It’s hard for me to get into it because the people that have said these things, I have actually worked with them, and we’ve all helped them educate themselves a little bit. I don’t want to say... they might hear this. But it was basically alluding to things not maybe being attractive because they’re feminine. And luckily for me I ignored that and I pushed forward. And then when I got the opportunity, I told them that that was wrong and encouraged them to educate themselves. That still happens to this day. There’s internalized homophobia and queerphobia all over the place, you know?

Words like “nonbinary” are relatively new. When you were growing up, how were you describing your gender?

I wasn’t familiar with the term “nonbinary” until I was, like, twenty-six. I actually got these tattoos when I was... it’s quite embarrassing. [Smith holds their pointer fingers up to show the tattoos.]

It’s the signs for male and female.

I got them when I was sixteen, when I could first get tattoos, one of my first tattoos ever. And I said it’s because I’m the best of both. [Laughs.] So, I was obviously aware of something at a young age.

Honestly, a lot of the language I found and the courage I found to express myself as a queer teen-ager actually came from Lady Gaga. When she came out, there was so much gay history around what she brought to the table, and I learned so much from her and from all the amazing people she worked with. Semi Precious Weapons was the band that supported her on tour, with Justin Tranter. And I’ve got to meet them and work with them a few times. They mean so much to me. When I went to those Gaga tours, I queued overnight to go to the Monster Ball and met amazing people, and I skipped school to go, and got in trouble with school. But Justin Tranter would come onstage, and they blew my mind. I was, like, the courage that they have, how sexy and confident they are onstage just really inspired me. I think it was the pop girls and the pop divas that really inspired me to be brave and express myself as a kid.

In hindsight, do you think the early success that you had would have been possible had you been presenting femme?

I think it would’ve been possible. I believe in myself and my music and my voice enough to say that I think I would’ve eventually probably been signed and had moments. I don’t think it would’ve been on that scale. Maybe eventually.

I think we’re in different times now where you’re seeing artists who have always presented in a certain way growing and growing and growing, and their core audience grows. But yeah, I don’t think it would’ve been the same. And that’s something I’ve had to come to a peace with—because it’s not like I was hiding. I find it hard when I see people very falsely say that I came out when I was twenty-one. I did not. I came out when I was ten, and I was a femme gay from a very, very young age. I don’t like this idea that I was hiding who I truly was. It wasn’t that. I was just experimenting in a different outfit during that period, and that outfit suddenly triggered doors to open for me, and I ran through those doors, and I have no regrets.

When you came out publicly as nonbinary, in 2019, that automatically made you one of the most famous nonbinary people in the world. How were you thinking about that fact before you came out?

It was a strange experience for me, because I spoke to some incredible nonbinary people who explained things to me and just helped me understand stuff. But when it came to me changing my pronouns, I actually messaged my family and some people on a group message—which now I see as a mistake—saying that I wanted to change my pronouns for a bit and to try things out and see how it fits. For some reason that I haven’t delved into, the press found out about this message, and so it was a moment where I was, like, O.K., it’s either gonna come out or I make a statement. And I’ve always lived by honesty and growing as a person, so I decided to say it myself. Now that I look back on it, maybe I would have wanted a bit more time just to sit with it by myself and to understand my community and my history, and actually almost have more lessons on how to speak as a nonbinary person on the stage that I was on, speaking about it.

Because you knew you’d be seen as a representative of the community.

And I would be so willing to speak like that—but as I’m getting older I’m now able to speak about it in a more nuanced way. But at that time I think it would’ve been nice to have more time, for sure.

Listening to the new album, there are many different references to your queerness. It made me think back to your song “HIM,” from 2017.

Yeah, oh, my God.

The chorus of that song is, “It is him I love.” It was shocking to hear—and, I think, a real risk to put that out at that time.

Mmm.

Now, almost ten years later, does it still feel like a risk to put out such explicitly queer music?

I wrote “HIM” as a response to the feedback from “In the Lonely Hour” about the neutrality of the pronouns and things like that. It wasn’t an intentional thing of hiding with “In the Lonely Hour.” I wrote “HIM” to be, like, “I’m cool saying ‘him.’ It’s all good.” I love that song, and I love that moment. But you’re right. I feel like on this album, I’m singing about a man and saying that more proudly than ever because it’s a love that’s reciprocated. And on “In the Lonely Hour” I was in love with a straight guy who was not gay, and we didn’t hook up. It was pure, unrequited love. It was a queer record for me, the singer, but the actual content was about me being in love with a straight man. Now, with “Hazel Eyes,” I’m singing about a man who loves me.

Is it O.K. to assume that “My Guy” is about your partner, Christian?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

What was it like when he heard the song for the first time?

Well, Christian loves hyperpop and really heavy metal, like, pop. But he loves this song, and he finds the beauty in it, and he adores it. He’s been so encouraging through the whole process, and it’s been this balancing act of, How much do you share, not wanting to share too much? But also, it’s about him, and it’s a love letter to him as a record, and of this time that we’re in.

At what point in the songwriting process did you play it for him?

I probably played him that one a few days after I wrote it. I show him things all the time.

In this new album, there are sounds I haven’t heard from you. There’s a little bit of country in there. There’s R.&B., there’s dance. I don’t have enough fingers to list all of the genres. So, if anything is possible, how do you describe what a Sam Smith song is or isn’t?

I think my music is dramatic, and there’s always some sort of tether to romance. But I feel like my music is free from those boundaries of genre a little bit. Just like I feel like I’m free from boundaries, too, as a queer person and in the way I express and dress. My music is no different to my expression of myself. Some days I wear trousers and a jacket, and then some days I’m wearing a beautiful gown. It’s the same with the music. I just let myself be free when it comes to those things.

A lot of your early music was about unrequited love, searching for love from others and also from yourself. I imagine that’s a fruitful place to write from.

Yeah.

Was it a challenge in this new album to write from a place of being happy?

I thought it would be. I really did. I was scared. I was always very scared of falling in love when I was younger, especially after “In the Lonely Hour” doing so well and changing my life in so many ways. I was, like, I better stay miserable. But I knew that, when it was time, and I was truly in love, I didn’t want to be scared of that. I have found that I can speak about darkness now and melancholy in even more powerful ways because I’ve been in a requited situation where someone loves me back in the way I love them. And building on the ups and downs of a relationship and how relationships are not this straight, narrow path, they’re a winding river where you’re both challenged all the time, and you can still hurt each other, and there can still be pain, and you navigate through that together. I found it a very deepening and enriching thing to pull from as an artist.

The new album is a big departure, both musically and in the content of the songs. Did you go into it with that goal?

Yeah, I mean, for me, this album was the biggest challenge as an artist, because the way that I’d been making albums up to this point was in a fabulously commercial way. I don’t see a negative to that word—I love commercial pop music. But I decided that I wanted to challenge myself with this record by writing with dear friends of mine who’ve had some successes within pop, but they weren’t pop-hit writers. It wasn’t about that for me. It was about being with friends, making beautiful music. My aim was to write it with a small group of people that stayed with me through the whole process and to step into producing more myself, which I did. I produced a lot of the record and was hands-on with the making of the record more than ever before. I set myself that task—and it was a huge task. It actually took a lot of courage, especially within the industry and the way that people are used to me making music.

Why did that take courage to do that?

Because I’m a pop artist, and the way that I would make music, you could hear the promise in the sound of the music, that it could be a possible success. I don’t write music for that reason, by the way. But, when you’re aiming to write a pop song, you want to lean into the catchiness of it. People get used to there being hooks within the song. And this album, when I was writing it, I stayed away from those choices, to challenge myself and say, Let’s find a different type of hook. Maybe a hook that comes two minutes into the song instead of twenty seconds into the song, and something that builds to the greatest hook of all time. I think “My Guy” builds to the most beautiful hook I’ve ever written or been a part of. So it was just about structuring things differently in a way that pop-heads and commercial people within the industry maybe aren’t used to hearing as much.

For a song like “No God,” from your last album, there’s a repetition of “No, no, no” in the background. There’s also some vocal distortion where you can’t make out what you’re saying. Are you hearing those things in your head and putting them down while you’re writing, or does that come later?

That all comes from me in the studio afterwards, building the world around the lead vocal. So I put down the vocal when we’ve written the song, and then, if the song requires it, I become my own choir. I become my own hype man. I become my own sound effects. I create sounds and instruments with my voice. You can create drum beats through your voice and synth pads with your voice, and then the computer changes it. I mean, all over “Hazel Eyes,” most of the production is me singing parts to players and then them re-creating it, playing it on another instrument. That’s what I do in the studio: I just sing parts, and then musicians take that and interpret that or copy it. But the record I’m currently making right now, after “Hazel Eyes”—

Wait. “Hazel Eyes” hasn’t come out yet and you’re already working on another?

I’m working on another record. I’m inspired to do it. And it’s more electro and more intense. I just make all different weird sounds and scream into the microphone and free myself and sometimes those things get turned into wild things that you would never imagine.

Is that record also inspired by this place of being in love?

It is, but it’s in a more naughty, playful way. “Hazel Eyes” is a new traditional queer-love romance album. That’s how I see it. And then I’ve just, whilst I’ve been making that, I’m also really hungry to shake my titties and encapsulate the way that I feel in my relationship. I’m still thirty-four, and I love to dance, and I’m free, and I’m still inspired by intense, hyperpop electro sounds. And so I’m also doing that.

That reminds me of “Unholy,” which is arguably the biggest song of your career. It went to No. 1, it won you a Grammy, and you’ve said that you got a lot of pushback from your team about releasing that. What was their reasoning for not wanting to release it?

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to release it. It was that they didn’t want it as the first single. And I started to get into a battle because I was, like, You’re not hearing what I’m hearing. I then started to realize there’s something about the sex in the song and the sexuality in the music and also the fun and lightheartedness of it—I think that “Unholy” broke down what people think of when they think of Sam Smith. Up until that point, a lot of people thought that my greatest strength was to sing heartbreak ballads. And I was just so desperate to pop that bubble for so long. “Unholy” really captured my playful side and my humor in the music, and I just championed that song from the beginning.

I would have assumed that you could release anything you wanted.

Oh, I can release whatever I want! But I also listen to people around me and what they think. In the pop world, I’ve actually enjoyed that back and forth, and sometimes it’s actually done really well for me. I think labels get a very bad rap a lot of the time, and I understand why they do—there’s a lot of issues—but I’ve worked with some unbelievably talented people who really love music, and I honor those relationships, and I like to hear what they think.

Did the success of “Unholy” give you permission to make “Hazel Eyes” weirder, to go further on things?

“Unholy” has given me permission just to do what I want now in my life. And it’s not that it gave me permission with everyone else, because I could’ve always done what I wanted to do as an artist. I was never trapped in a label situation where I was being forced to do something. Seeing people’s reaction to that song and them feeling me and my energy through that music, I was, like, “You get me. I feel like I can express all shades and colors of myself now with no fear.”

How has your voice changed as you’ve gotten older?

Oh, my God. Loads. I mean, I can sing lower than ever before. I can still sing in the heights, but it’s a different tone. It’s a fuller sound. In my twenties, I had fun. I smoked on and off a little bit. Never, like, full-time smoker, but I smoked. I don’t know if that had too much of an impact. I think the biggest impact on my voice and the changes have been the workload of singing. I think that I have sacrificed notes in my register from the amount of work and travel and touring and singing that I’ve done in my life. I’ve done probably near to a thousand shows, and I sing full out the whole time for two hours, projecting to an audience. It takes a toll on your instrument after a while.

I was curious because, in the album’s final track, “To Be Free,” you start off singing...

“Pray your heart be lighter, brave and free like mine.”

Right. And the quality of your voice isn’t something I’d heard before.

It’s a different shape. I was kind of like the sound “E,” like that. [Opens mouth wide, keeping teeth together.] I put my mouth into a shape like that when I’m singing, and I realized that, if I just stay there and sing the verse, this completely different timbre comes out.

You’re still learning new things that your voice can do.

My voice is gonna change forever. I like now that I sound completely different in some songs to other songs. I wish and hope for people to see that as part of Sam Smith music—that you don’t ever necessarily know what you’re gonna get.

Technically, the beginning of “To Be Free”—is that you mixing your head and chest voice? Is that falsetto?

I think it’s a bit of falsetto with chest kind of mixed together. It’s also just the position of the day. That recording, by the way—I sang that before I wrote “Unholy,” which is wild.

So that’s just been sitting on your hard drive for years?

I wrote that the week I changed my pronouns. I wrote “To Be Free” and that song kind of stuck with me all through the “Gloria” album process, and I was, like, “I’m gonna return to this feeling, and I’m gonna make a whole album in this world,” and I did.

But it just didn’t fit in your last album.

No. “Hazel Eyes” was a response to “Gloria.” So while I was going through all of the “Unholy” stuff, “Hazel Eyes” became this safe space that I would return to, to sing my song, freely and safely.

With that “To Be Free” sound we’re talking about, are you able to re-create that every night when you’re singing it live?

Sometimes. There’s some times when it hits. It’s a very, very hard song to sing. But sometimes it connects and it’s really, really beautiful. But I sound different singing it now. My voice sounds a little bit lower. I can’t hit some of the notes that I originally hit on that song. There’s certain songs, like “Latch,” which are really, really hard. I can still hit the chorus now, but it is harder.

Earlier in the conversation we mentioned your partner, Christian Cowan. He’s a fashion designer. It was reported recently that you’re engaged. Can I ask, who proposed to whom?

Oh, there are secrets I will never tell. Even in the music I would never say. It’s just too special.♦

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