Sam Smith

With R&B and pop and disco and chorales, Sam Smith has reinvented their career with the wide-ranging 'Gloria.'

And it feels like a coming of age.” With songs that are both sacred and profane, with R&B and pop and disco and chorales, “Gloria” is all of that and more. But the spiritual themes of a song called “Gloria” sung by a medieval-sounding church choir could not be more obvious. The song features just the choir for the first minute, until Smith’s voice comes soaring in, evoking images of angels on a church ceiling; although they’ve described it as “my queer anthem,” the lyrics are fairly elliptical and again are counterintuitive to the music — demons and monsters in the first verse, empowerment in the second. 1 and the song of this summer, “I’m Not Here to Make Friends.” A collaboration with Reyez and DJ titan Calvin Harris, it’s embellished with a Chic groove, sparkling strings and a sassy title that will inspire countless don’t-f-with-me finger-pointing on dancefloors, but the real payoff comes in the response: “I’m not here to make friends/ I need a lover.” (And may we respectfully suggest that a remix featuring Dua Lipa would be stunning.) The album opens deceptively with “Love Me More,” a gospel-inflected self-care song that places its empowering but sometimes dark lyrics — “Every day I’m trying not to hate myself” — over a sincere, sing-song melody that seems more suited to a John Legend or Jon Batiste (or, honestly, a TV commercial). Smith’s fourth album, “Gloria” is not that at all — it’s a wild, wide-ranging night out that’s tinged with adventure and some danger, but still gets you home safely.

Sam Smith staged one of pop music's most groundbreaking queer reinventions. The confident Gloria doesn't quite live up to that.

That description captures the spirit of this album, which, after the striking breakthrough of Love Goes, feels more like a work of stretched boundaries in which Smith hasn’t quite caught up to themself. Accompanied by spare guitar strings, Smith sings about covering for a lying, angry ex-partner, building up to an affecting chorus: “Nobody taught you how to cry / But somebody showed you how to lie.” It’s arguably the strongest ballad Smith has ever recorded. The penultimate song, “Gloria,” would have worked as a less obvious, more confident closing statement. It’s actually not so much a song as a vibe — it’s less than two minutes long — featuring Smith singing ethereally about demons on their shoulder and monsters in their head. Gloria opens with “Love Myself,” a neo-soul midtempo track where Smith sings about not liking what they see in the mirror, but finding it less painful to deal with society’s reflection. They’ve metamorphosed out of their earlier cultural wallpaper era, when they sadly begged a lover to stay with them (in 2014’s “Stay With Me”) and declared themself “too good at goodbyes” (in 2017’s song of that title). “You’re no god, no leader,” they sing defiantly. In “Not God,” they adopt an accusatory tone addressing an entitled authoritarian ex-partner who likes to hear themself speak. The album’s other bid for dancefloor domination, “Not Here to Make Friends,” is comparatively underwhelming. Smith declares: “Thirty almost got me and I’m so over love songs,” but the overall vibe isn’t exactly euphoric — in part because the chorus, which leans on the titular reality TV catchphrase, feels stilted and doesn’t memorably rework the meme in any way. The album showcases Smith’s musical range; they tackle everything from ’90s Europop to neo-soul and attempt to expand their songwriting to include themes of sex, self-empowerment, and even a tinge of politics. And I feel like Gloria is the album I needed that I never had.”

Gloria is the fourth album from the 30-year-old pop vocalist and features collaborations with Kim Petras, Koffee, Jessie Reyez and Ed Sheeran. Smith, who ...

Will Hodgkinson of The Times gave the record two stars and wrote that it “showcases Smith as a brilliant singer, and someone with a story to tell, but only too willing to let cliche tell it”. The PA news agency’s Imy Brighty-Potts gave the record 4.5 stars out of five and described it as a “glorious portfolio” showing Smith’s “musical versatility and exciting self-exploration”. Smith, who identifies as non-binary, has said the record “feels like a coming of age” and helped them “through some dark times”.

Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, the 30-year-old singer revealed that while there have been no issues with their new gender identity in their personal ...

There's so much incredible female talent in the UK — they should be on that list.' I wish I knew what the words were when I was in school, because I would've identified as that in school. Someone spat at me in the street. It's exhausting and especially in England.' 'It was in the f****** news. And just the amount of hate and s****ness that came my way was just exhausting.

Sam Smith's album Gloria leans into the singer's musical contradictions and ideological dualities, coming out with the sharpest full length in their catalog ...

“No God” sounds like a scathing rebuke to social-media know-it-alls and pundits who stoke division for a living until the bridge gives the song’s subject a break (“I know you’re trying to heal the world / You’re only trying to prove your worth”), a jarring reversal for a tune with a choir in margins of the chorus singing “Ain’t nobody wanna hear your voice” while Sam lays into you: “You’re no God, you’re no teacher / You’re no saint, you’re no leader.” The ferocity of the delivery sells the message better than the words do. It’s a warm note of encouragement [dressed up as a liturgical tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaYJ2vOpw44): “Be yourself so loud tonight they’ll hear you from the stars / Sparkling like dynamite, if that is who you are.” In spite of the flaws you begin to notice on closer inspection, Gloria feels zesty and joyful. [crushed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZvOhHF85I) in the early years and a smoothing out of the abrasive sound design and spirited iconoclasm that made the goofies suspicious of [SOPHIE](https://www.vulture.com/article/sophie-wake.html) early on, back before the late legend’s ideas about identity and artifice were properly appreciated as expressions of a trans experience. The influence of gospel and choral music on this album feels different than on The Thrill of It All, where it looked like a rapid response to an influx of church choirs and samples of religious staples that followed Ye’s The Life of Pablo and Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book. Gloria is looking to strike a precarious balance, luxuriating in Sam Smith’s truth and sharing lessons they’ve learned on the road to feeling comfortable in their own body amid public scrutiny of their weight, style, and romantic pursuits while providing carefree party anthems and making sure the singer stays abreast of current trends in pop. [TERF Island](https://twitter.com/lbc/status/1490424440454369281)) articulating all this and dropping RuPaul’s Drag Race, Pink Flamingoes, and Paris Is Burning clips into a batch of songs about doing better for ourselves and each other. The slow jam “Six Shots” swoops down into the singer’s low register as they spend a night in the cups alongside a crush; the Calvin Harris bop “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” flips the old reality TV adage into a whooping declaration of interest in bagging someone cute in the club. [history-making chart-topper](https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/sam-smith-kim-petras-unholy-no-1-first-trans-nonbinary-artists.html) “Unholy” summarizes the ideas at Gloria’s core. I didn’t want it to be ‘Sam Smith, the gay singer.’ I wanted it to be ‘Sam Smith, the singer who happens to be gay.’” (It took many years of dogged debates and advocacy to get American Democratic leadership onboard with same-sex marriage; David Cameron enraged Tories by forcing a discourse on the issue that the party couldn’t derail.) The pressure Smith felt to fit in and make music that appealed to everyone was a side effect of toiling toward a career in pop music while press hounded Britney Spears, and gay rumors trailed Robbie Williams to the extent that he eventually named his 2013 big-band album Swings Both Ways. [recordings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCt7M_qlhF4) on the Sam Smith Diva Boy collection tell that story.) It eluded the listener’s handle on genre and gender; Disclosure’s Guy Lawrence thought he’d heard a Black woman singing in the demo that landed Smith the spot on “Latch.” These were not the simpler times the current wave of nostalgia for the late 2000s implies, not if you were living outside the cookie-cutter ideas about sexuality and gender expression that prevailed in that era.

The singer-songwriter has opened up about what life has been like since announcing they were non binary.

The Unholy singer said they were being verbally abused in public more than ever.

“So, that was the hardest part, I think, was being at home in the UK and having people shouting at me in the street. … It was in the f*****g news. I feel comfortable in my skin, but I wear what I want to wear," they continued.

In an emotional interview, Sam said: “What people don't realise with trans/ non-binary people in the UK is it's happening in the street. “I'm being abused ...

After filling the airwaves with middle-of-the-road ballads, the British star signalled a more risky era with Unholy . New album Gloria plays it…

After publicly coming out as gay, and then later again as non-binary, and having worked on issues surrounding their body image (“I now have the opposite of body dysmorphia,” they recently told The Times, “I look fabulous”), Smith’s sense of joy in their presentation feels groundbreaking. Musically, that bait and switch is still present on Gloria, with Smith acutely aware of their audience, offering up a handful of mid-paced, rustic ballads (one particularly drippy one features Ed Sheeran), to keep the casual listeners happy. Having come out as non-binary shortly after How Do You Sleep?‘s release, the hope was Smith was about to embrace their queerness, only for the muddled Love Goes, with its noticeably muted aesthetic, to look like a retreat. It was supposed to form the backbone of third album, To Die For, a record that was semi-scrapped, retitled Love Goes and released in the midst of the pandemic. After years of trying to work out how much or how little of their sexuality and identity to reveal, Smith now inhabits an intriguing space in pop culture as a gloriously queer, properly mainstream act. Unholy’s staggering success has seen Smith and Petras break a record to become the first openly non-binary and trans musicians to reach number one in the UK and US.

Sam Smith has opened up about their experience with transphobia in the UK, admitting that they face more public abuse at home than abroad.

[In a four-star review](https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/sam-smith-gloria-review-the-most-vital-work-of-their-career-3387484), NME’s [Nick Levine](https://www.nme.com/author/nick-levine) described ‘Gloria’ as “the most surprising, satisfying and vital work of [Smith’s] career”, and declared that the singer “has never sounded better because they’ve never been more themselves”. According to Smith, the problem is prevalent “especially in England”, while cities like New York and Los Angeles are far more accepting of people that do not physically appear to be cisgender. “That’s a wild feeling,” Smith added, “because America is a complex place. Smith went on to say they’ve ultimately felt “joy in abundance” as an openly non-binary person, and described coming out as “a coming home”. Smith then pointed to the larger issue of systemic transphobia faced by people in the UK on a regular basis. Smith and Lowe found a common ground in the fact that as a famous person, avoiding hate is nearly impossible. Touching on the downsides of being an openly transgender person in the public eye, Smith said: “I think the only negatives and the struggle[s] have been in my public life, and my job. They continued: “If that’s happening to me – and I’m famous, I’m a pop star – can you imagine what other queer kids are feeling? Like I’m being abused in the street, verbally, more than I ever have. “It was in the fucking news,” Smith quipped, “[so] it was hard not to look [at the negative comments]. And it was really hard.” Explaining how their life has changed since coming out, Smith told Lowe: “We’ve got two sides, really: my personal life and then my public life.

Sam, who appeared on BBC The Graham Norton Show on Friday night, was speaking out over the release of their new album Gloria.

“I haven’t heard that in my own country from politicians.” They added: “I’ve my next three albums planned and possibly half of them are written. And it’s just so sad that we’re in 2023 and it’s still happening.” Sam said: “What people don’t realise with trans/ non-binary people in the UK is it’s happening in the street.

The singer's fourth album ups the tempo – and makes history – but stops short of fulfilling its potential as a fun-filled stomper.

[In ](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/25/in-the-lonely-hour-review-sam-smith-less-ordinary-name-suggests) [the Lonely Hour](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/25/in-the-lonely-hour-review-sam-smith-less-ordinary-name-suggests) (2014) declared itself to be [a howl of pain at unrequited love for a man at the time](https://www.thefader.com/2014/05/28/cover-story-sam-smith-opens-up-about-life-and-love), it feels as though Gloria may be the end result of a long pupation. [Paris ](https://www.theguardian.com/film/paris-is-burning) [Is Burning](https://www.theguardian.com/film/paris-is-burning), the 1991 documentary on ballroom culture. [Renaissance](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/06/beyonce-renaissance-review-a-breathtaking-maximalist-tour-de-force), Beyoncé’s all-partying shakedown of 2022? Sure, Smith sings about feeling free to love who they love, but you’d think Sheeran might have realised something slinky might have been more apposite on an album dedicated to fun – and liberation from the past. And with Unholy, Smith and Petras have, in fact, made history – topping the singles chart in the US – [a first for an out non-binary artist and a trans singer](https://www.nme.com/news/music/sam-smith-and-kim-petras-set-unique-lgbtq-billboard-chart-record-with-unholy-3334838). But then Ed Sheeran crops up on Who We Love, bearing the unnecessary gift of a midtempo wet blanket. [Grammy nomination](https://www.out.com/music/2022/11/15/sam-smith-kim-petras-1-hit-unholy-just-got-grammy-nomination) precisely because its raunchy maximalism marks such a shift from Smith’s damp hanky of a back catalogue. Gloria is the name of an energy – [possibly feminine, possibly of nature ](https://www.nme.com/news/music/sam-smith-shares-gloria-title-track-their-queer-love-hymn-3384608)– that Smith says has been freed inside themself. Even more upfront is the mischievous, tropical pop-inflected [Gloria](https://store.samsmithworld.com/?utm_campaign=SamSmithTooGoodAtGoodbyesTooGoodAtGoodbyes20171011&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=Website&utm_linkurl=samsmith.world%2FStore&utm_board=sam-smith&utm_country=GB&utm_referrer=direct), testify to Smith having done their LGBTQIA+ history homework. And largely, the album is persuasive. [Sam Smith](https://www.theguardian.com/music/sam-smith) made a gaffe that became a huge international incident.

The artist topped the charts with 'Unholy' and now follows that with the rest of their fourth studio album.

See our [latest prediction champs](https://www.goldderby.com/best-prediction-scores/awards/league-data/). [here in our forums](https://www.goldderby.com/forum/music/). Can you top our [esteemed leaderboards](https://www.goldderby.com/article/2022/grammy-awards-2022-winners-best-prediction-scores/) next? Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our [famous forums](https://www.goldderby.com/forums/) where thousands of showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. [Make your predictions](https://www.goldderby.com/leagues/) at Gold Derby now. [Sam Smith](https://www.goldderby.com/t/sam-smith/) released their fourth studio album “Gloria” on Friday, January 27, a few months after they reached the top of the [Billboard Hot 100](https://www.goldderby.com/feature/billboard-number-one-songs-2023-1205219355/) singles chart with “Unholy” featuring [Kim Petras](https://www.goldderby.com/t/kim-petras/). Download our free and easy app for [Apple/iPhone devices](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1460576753) or [Android (Google Play)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pmc.goldDerby) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for [best prediction accuracy scores](https://www.goldderby.com/article/2022/grammys-2023-nominations-best-prediction-scores/). mixing classy downbeat pop with moments of disco catharsis.” He adds that “Smith’s soulful voice is stunning throughout” and that the album is “rich musically, thematically and above all, emotionally.” Though they ruled the awards with their debut collection “In the Lonely Hour,” winning four times including Record of the Year (“Stay with Me”) and Best New Artist, they didn’t receive another nomination until “Unholy” with Kim Petras this year. As of this writing the album has a MetaCritic score of 72 based on four reviews counted thus far: two positive and two somewhat mixed. Will it get Smith back to the Grammys? Is the entire album just as big a hit as that song has been?

The singer, 30, maintained their gender-defying style as they celebrated with friends at London's 34 Mayfair restaurant on Friday night.

There's so much incredible female talent in the UK — they should be on that list.' I wish I knew what the words were when I was in school, because I would've identified as that in school. Someone spat at me in the street. [Sam Smith](/tvshowbiz/sam-smith/index.html), 30, maintained their gender-defying style as they celebrated the release of their new album Gloria at London's 34 Mayfair restaurant with a group of friends on Friday night. And just the amount of hate and s****ness that came my way was just exhausting. 'It was in the f****** news.

As they release their latest album, their second since coming out as genderqueer, it is time to celebrate just how fantastically themselves they are.

Kiss a hundred boys and not feel like I’m tied to them.” That’s a huge change from the person who opened their first single with “I’m no good at a one-night stand.” The outfits are thrilling, the music is more fun than it’s ever been, and Smith has truly learned to love themself. I didn't know what was going on, you didn't know what was going on, but what we can all agree on is that these performances will one day replace the dictionary definition of camp. That’s an alarming trend with a lot of Smith’s social media content: people lamenting the “loss” of the Sam Smith of yesteryear, frequently expressing their disgust with the artist's new persona every time they put on a fun outfit or reveal bare skin. You can’t shake the feeling in Smith’s work that there’s a deep sense of discomfort below the thoughtful lyrics and striking melodies, especially in these older songs. That’s always hard to do, but when trans and non-binary rights are constantly under attack (particularly in the US and the UK), it’s especially powerful. Smith also isn’t skinny, and the combination of being non-binary and having body fat seems to be too much for some of the peanut gallery to process. Sure, for many you simply fit in a preconceived box and stay there without a care in the world. Their voice blew me away, and the song had that balance between stoic and whiny that reflected my own psyche to a tee. I had a great time, but there was something that lingered with me long after the concert: how could someone with such a powerful voice come across as so shy and reserved? The answer is none, as ["Unholy” is the first ever.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/kim-petras-on-if-jesus-was-a-rockstar-unholy-and-making-history-as-a-trans-artist) With Smith’s latest album Gloria now available, Smith is poised to cement his status as one of the world’s most popular artists.