On the last day of 2022, Sam Smith posted a video message to their 14.6 million Instagram followers. Basking in the glow of an Australian summer, the London-born singer-songwriter declared with a smile: “I’ve never felt so free.”
Sam Smith performs at The Cube in South Australia in January, 2023.Credit:Daniel Boud
“My mum always said this would happen as I get older, and like always, she’s right,” Smith tells this masthead a couple of weeks later, speaking of their hard-earned liberation. “I do feel like I’m caring less what people think, which is a wonderful thing. I started releasing music when I was 20 years old, and it was daunting and scary. With this record I really set out to make an album that I love – and I absolutely love it.”
Smith looks relaxed and assured sitting in an Adelaide hotel room a few days after posting the new year’s message. It’s a moment of relative calm before their fourth studio album Gloria arrives on January 27, followed by a world tour that will eventually bring them back to Australia in October and November.
Smith says the new record is a showcase of their resilience, with its title representing their “fighter spirit”.
“It hasn’t been an easy road at times,” the Grammy and Academy Award-winner says of their relationship with pop music and the industry. “I really feel like Gloria stands for getting through it; ‘Gloria’ is what I call the voice in myself, that feminine voice in myself that says ‘keep going’.
Sam Smith’s new album, Gloria, marks a belated coming of age.Credit:Michael Bailey Gate
“I think it’s my mum’s voice, honestly,” Smith laughs, “but I’ve called it ‘Gloria’.”
Gloria also marks a belated coming of age. Having built a career on heart-rending, piano-driven ballads like Stay With Me and Too Good At Goodbyes, Gloria explores themes of joy and liberation exemplified by opening track Love Me More, a crisp and cruisy declaration of self-worth.
“I feel like heartbreak and misery and sadness and unrequited love became themes within my work and music that really became a safe space for me – writing sad songs and accessing those emotions became quite easy for me to do at times. And always really have, because I’m a drama queen.
“I really wanted to make a statement with the first song, that the challenge with this record was to feel joy, and I really realised that a lot of that to do was with my sexuality. I feel like earlier on in my career, which I think happens to quite a lot of queer artists in their life, you feel a little bit desexualised. [There’s] something so empowering about expressing that, and feeling that… and that’s when Unholy happened in the studio.”
Smith can barely contain their glee when discussing the album’s theatrical second single, Unholy. Playing with themes of shame and lust over a lurching beat, the track offers a side of Smith more suited to the club than crying at home – and a winking rebuke of the pressure they once felt to tone down their sexuality.
“I had to push so hard with this song, so hard,” they explain. “I got to the point, just before releasing it, where I was in quite a magic place – I just didn’t care what anyone thought. All I knew is that I loved this song and artistically it felt so sweet to me from the very beginning.”
Sam Smith performs with joy and abandon at D’arenberg Cube in McLaren Vale.Credit:Daniel Boud
Unholy has proved a hit with listeners, and when Smith performs an intimate concert at the D’arenberg Cube in McLaren Vale the following night, it gets the biggest response of the night. “This song is #1 right now in Australia,” they tell the crowd, “and I’m so thankful.”
Onstage, a beaming Smith moves their body with a sense of fluidity and abandon they once reserved for the safer, more private confines of the club. Smith says much of that growing up happened in Australia, which has become a “little safe haven” ever since their first visit a decade ago.
“I was 20 or 21, I didn’t have any gay friends, I was very confused, I felt quite isolated. I was getting well known, but I was like, ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend, I don’t know how I’m going to experience the things I need to experience while juggling this job’.”
But the friendship and personal growth they found on that trip proved formative. “I met an amazing man called Trent in Sydney, who took me to a gay bar called Stonewall; we sat outside and he basically took me under his wing. He could see that I was in this weird place as a queer person, and he gave me all this amazing knowledge about Australian queer history, and queer history in general.”
Smith has rung in the new year with friends in Australia ever since, with a flash of fresh red ink on their wrist a souvenir of this latest trip. “It’s a kangaroo paw, a flower,” Smith says, “I love it.”
Like Gloria, the days-old tattoo is a symbol of love, joy and freedom – and of an artist proud to wear their heart on their sleeve.
Sam Smith will be touring Australia across October and November, with shows at Rod Laver Arena October 31 and November 1, and Qudos Bank Arena in November 3 and 4.
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