Sam Smith was virtually unknown until this year, despite having sung with Disclosure and Naughty Boy and having a hit record. In a new interview with The Guardian, he talks about his rapid rise from cleaning toilets to international fame and his fear of losing it all. Here's what we learned...
On where he lives in London:
"My current flat? ...£500 a month. I got burgled a few weeks ago, so now I'm actually homeless. I'm trying to find a place to live."
"It's proper rundown. It's good and humbling. I grew up in an amazing house...Actually, saying that, till the age of four I lived in a tiny two-bedroomed house."
On how his unrequited love reacted to finding out In The Lonely Hour was about him:
"I told him a week before the album came out. He'd heard the record, but didn't have a clue it was about him. He just said, 'Are you OK?' It was a lovely response. The reason I told him was because it was like closure to me. When I fell in love with this guy last year, it was the third person in my life I had had really strong feelings for and they'd never loved me back. And this album was almost a way for me to break the cycle. I will never let myself fall in love with someone again in that way."
On his current feelings about love:
"When I fell in love with this guy last year, it was the third person in my life I had had really strong feelings for and they'd never loved me back. And this album was almost a way for me to break the cycle. I will never let myself fall in love with someone again in that way.
I just know [it won't happen]. I promise you. I have to believe it because I want to fall in love with someone who loves me back. And I'm going to do anything in my life to convince myself that is possible."
On "coming out" in a Fader interview:
"I didn't come out. I came out when I came out of my mum! No, that side of things to me is just normality. I find it weird when people use the expression 'coming out' like it's a massive party of relief."
On the public accusations that his mother was fired for spending time working on his career:
"It's made me a very paranoid person now. Even now I get paranoid if one of my team doesn't reply or seems angry with me - I'm like, oh no, that's it."
On the first song he sang:
"The first thing I sang in a lesson was Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra."
On food:
"I think I prefer food to singing. It's really bad, isn't it? Food is my favourite thing in the world. I always say if I ate what I actually wanted to eat I'd be in one of those electronic scooters because I'd be too big."
On his body type:
"I was a very big teenager. Well, massive actually. Well, not massive, but big. My dad basically became a fitness trainer to help me. He took courses and started to train me, and taught me how to eat better. I take after my mum's side... I was very self-conscious about it. I'm on a diet now. I'm always going to have issues with my weight. We did loads of running. All the stuff you hate, he tried to make me do. He took out all the fizzy drinks, all the chocolate, all the bad foods in the house, which was unfair on my two sisters because they have a different body type to me."
"People like real life. Why do people like all this crap television out there? Because you're looking at what you can relate to. And music should be speaking about things you can relate to. That's the key. I can't relate to skinny, perfectly sculptured, tanned men singing about gold chains and Ferraris because I'm not that way."
On being pegged as "rich":
"The climb to money was sudden. We were doing nicer things, building, travelling around the world. But just as quick as the climb was the decline. We're in a whole different situation. So I actually get really angry when I hear people say I come from money, because when I was younger I had money and then I didn't. So I really do know more what it's like to be poor than I know what it's like to be rich."
On almost giving up his dream but knowing he would someday make it:
"Remember, I started when I was 13. I was 19, and all my friends were at university and travelling and I was stuck in London cleaning toilets, and I'd already had six managers, and I was like, no, if it doesn't happen next year I'm going to leave and travel and see the world."
"I'll tell you what. Deep down in me there was never a question. I don't want to sound big-headed or horrible, but from day one I had a quiet confidence that everything would be OK."
On what he would be doing if his music career didn't work:
"I would have opened up a flower shop in Italy. ...I used to love going to the garden centre as a kid. It made me feel relaxed. It would have just been a calm, beautiful life."
On the new friends he's made since becoming famous:
"I wonder if they'll be surrounding me if my next album charts at No 104. It's reminding me of that time when my mum had so much money and then all the people she thought were her closest friends disappeared. I'm more wary than anyone about who I surround myself with."
On his sophomore album:
"Even right now I have the title in my head to my second album; I know what it's going to sound like. I have the idea in my head for the artwork and I also have the idea for the artwork for my third album.
Well, it's bad. I feel like it's a curse sometimes. I'm all about the safety net. [The next album is] going to be more uplifting... I just hope my life is more uplifting when I write it."
On his current love life:
"Getting there. Yeah! I'm going on dates. I think I've got four people on the go! Hahaha!" Really? He looks bashful. "No, I've been on four separate dates in the last two months."
On being successful without losing his soul:
"It's what I'm dealing with in my head right this moment. I want to be the biggest-selling male pop star in the entire world. I really want that, but at the same time I want to keep this. (He clutches his heart). I don't want to lose this. I'm going to make ['having it all'] possible."
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