SAM
SMITH
Practice,
practice,
practice.
By Tom Lanham
continued on page 26
A
s an aspiring British soul singer,
you know you’ve made it when
one of America's hugest sketch
comedy shows, NBC's Saturday Night Live,
invites you to appear, long before your
debut album is even released. So Sam
Smith, then only 21 and virtually unknown
outside of his homeland, felt a little wind
beneath his fledgling wings this March
when he strolled out on the show's stage to
croon a passionate, Gospel-school rendition of his latest single “Stay With Me" to
rousing, rafter-rattling applause. Who was
this kid with the cherubic good looks and
Boy-George-charismatic voice? folks wondered. And where in the hell had he come
from, seemingly overnight?
No one is wondering any more. From
that fateful moment on, Smith's career has
been on a skyward-bound, rocket-velocity
trajectory, culminating in the recent news
that his debut disc – In the Lonely Hour,
which streeted in May – had earned him
no less than six Grammy nominations,
including one for Best New Artist. And he
had a triumphant return engagement on
SNL on its Christmas episode last month.
Sort of. The program opened with comedian Taran Killam, dressed like the singer in
his foppish finest, under the hilarious title
of "A Very Somber Christmas With Sam
Smith." "Christmas is about spending time
with the ones you love, which is why I'm
all alone," Killam's overly sensitive Smith
character intoned, before the broadcast cut
out, only to be pre-empted by Mike Myers,
in bald-headed Dr. Evil mode from his
Austin Powers films.
The skit, of course, poked fun at the
most topical subject of the week – North
Korea's anger over the controversial (and
hastily pulled) flick The Interview. But in
passing, it made its own humorous little
point about Smith's gut-wrenching, hearton-sleeve album: In his own interviews
this year, the artist, now 22, has revealed
that he's gay, and that most of his album
lyrically concerns his lifelong battle with
unrequited love. Chances are, he wasn't
actually going stag this Yuletide, as Killam
insinuated, since Hour is one of the two
biggest-selling pop records of 2014, second
only to Taylor Swift's monster hit 1989. But
the fact that Smith – in nine short months –
had acquired such a recognizable, albeit
spoofable, profile was news in itself.
Wherever he was this holiday season, Sam
Smith, you can rest assured, was 100% certain that he finally had hit the big time.
The operative word here? 'Finally.'
Smith has been taking his career seriously
ever since childhood. Long before he even
had the terminology to call it a career.
"Singing is something I work hard on, but
it's never felt like a chore to me," says the
affable, self-deprecating performer, who
first came to prominence in 2012 as the
guest vocalist on Disclosure's hit "Latch"
and Naughty Boy's "La La La." "And I
would personally say that my real teachers
of music were the artists I would listen to,
and for that, I would thank my parents.
Because all my mom did was play Whitney
Houston or Luther Vandross or Stevie
Wonder from a young age. And I remember – as much as I don't listen to male
singers – listening to Stevie's tones, and it
was just so spot-on-the-nose, so warm.
And now I'm really, really critical of myself
– if it's not spot-on-the-nose, then I'm not
happy."
By age eight, Junior knew what he
wanted for Christmas – vocal lessons from
renowned jazz singer and instructor
22 illinoisentertainer.com january 2015
Joanna Eden. And that wasn't the concept
of a starry-eyed stage mom, he swears.
"That was me pushing my mum, because I
was very hungry to do something from a
very young age," he says.