Sam Smith Essentials

Sam Smith first gained significant traction singing on a pair of dance hits—Disclosure’s 2012 single “Latch” and Naughty Boy’s “La La La” the following year. The London-born singer revealed that elastic falsetto, but didn’t quite hint at the sadness that would define their outrageous success to come. That arrived with “Stay With Me”, on 2014’s Grammy Award-winning In the Lonely Hour, a meditation on unrequited love, and “Too Good at Goodbyes”, from the heartbreak-inspired follow-up The Thrill of It All. This second album saw Smith—by then an Oscar winner for 2015’s Bond theme “Writing’s on the Wall”—open up about instant fame and embrace their status as a gay role model, against a backdrop of stirring, gospel-infused balladry. Smith’s third album should have arrived in early 2020 in the form of To Die For, but, amid the global pandemic, it was delayed, reworked and renamed with the more sensitive title of Love Goes. “When I look back at Love Goes, it reminds me of the courage it took,” Smith told Apple Music. “Each time I make an album, I learn to like myself a little more. The more I make music, the closer to myself I feel.” Indeed, they very much accomplished that on their fourth album, 2023’s Gloria, which featured “Love Me More” and the transgressive Kim Petras collab “Unholy”. “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but Gloria, for me, is like when a butterfly leaves a cocoon,” Smith said. “That’s what I wanted this record to feel like all the way through. I wanted there to be strength within every single song. I feel like my true artist self has arrived, in a way.” A year later, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of In the Lonely Hour, they reissued the album with a new recording of “Stay With Me,” some of its lyrics rewritten to reflect Smith’s non-binary identity.