SAM SMITH
ple who've been in my life who never
thought I would do this. But I did!"
In the Lonely Hour deserves all the
acclaim. And sales figures. It opens with
another single, the finger-popping "Money
on My Mind," which lets Smith's rich,
retro-R&B voice leap from trapeze to trapeze over jagged beats. And he's just getting warmed up. "Stay With Me" follows,
in two stunning versions – his skeletal
Sunday-sermon take and a bonus-track
take featuring Mary J. Blige (with whom he
just penned several tracks for her criticallykudoed new album "The London
Sessions"). Then there's the simple acoustic
strummer "Leave Your Lover" (unrequited
love to the maudlin max), a stomping
roadhouse rocker called "I'm Not the Only
One," the melancholy, operatic piano ballad "Life Support" (unrequited, times
umpteen), and the bubbly "Restart," which
sounds celebratory until you pay closer
attention to the hand-wringing wordplay:
"It was a Monday night when you told me
it was over/ And by the Friday night I
knew that I would be okay." The songs are
all good, solid soulful efforts. But it's
Smith's elastic, truly elegiac throat that elevates them to neo-classic status.
Smith once saw the now-omnipresent
Idina Menzel open the musical Wicked in
his native London when he was an impressionable youngster. And he
knows the old
'How do you get
to
Broadway?'
asking-for-directions joke, and its
cutting punchline:
'Practice,
practice,
practice!' "And I look
after my voice
really well," he
declares. "I train
every morning
and
I'm
as
healthy as I can
be. I try not to
drink and I keep
as quiet as possible. I was trained by some
amazing people, and I've taken their
secrets and tips, and I wake up every
morning and do 15 or 20 minutes of vocal
exercises. And then I'm set for the rest of
the day. So I work hard at this, I really do."
Smith's worst enemy? The common
cold. A flu bug could grind his exacting
performances to an embarrassing halt.
"But you know what?" he chuckles.
"Sometimes when you get a cold, you get a
cold, and there's nothing you can do about
it. And do you know what's really horrible
about it? It's all in your head. And if I can't
sing, there isn't a show, and you feel really
responsible for that. So that's the only
thing that's really annoying. Other than
that? I'm fine."
And there have been some incredibly
scary vocal moments. Heading over to
Austin's South by Southwest music festival
this year, the singer felt a tickle in his
throat. He'd had a cold a few weeks before,
but he thought he's defeated it. "But as
soon as I got on the plane, I could feel the
cold coming back," he says. "So I went to
do the festival, and my voice was just on its
last legs, basically. And this is really
descriptive, but the fan (onstage) was hitting the phlegm in my throat and it was all
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drying up. And it was horrible – when I
was singing, it felt like I was going to
cough all the time. But I got through that.
And I still did the show. And as much as
I've been losing my voice, I haven't cancelled one show. Not ever."
Has Smith ever considered getting his
voice insured? In a Lloyd's of London sort
of deal? He cackles. "Oh, you can't do that!"
he exclaims. "Uhhh…can you? I've never
thought about that…" And he has another
famous person he could turn to advice –
UK pop diva Lily Allen, to whom he's
actually related. "But I've only met Lily
once," he says. "She's my third cousin, and
I honestly think she's amazing. I've been a
massive fan of hers, from her very first
album." Now, of course, a duet or two
might be in order for Smith's hugely-anticipated follow-up.
Many vocalists reluctantly admit that –
when they first hear themselves singing on
playback – they're struck by how alien,
even dissonant their own voice initially
sounds. Smith understands the strange
phenomenon. "You know what? I don't
enjoy listening to my voice played back
sometimes," he cedes. "Especially through
TV. I also feel that television is not suited
for singers with range. And I've studied
this really intently, just through watching
TV performances for the last five or six
years. And then
seeing
those
same singers live
myself, it's very,
very different. I
mean,
think
about the speakers that are on
your TV – they're
very tiny, so they
can only take a
certain range. So
singers that rely
more on their
tone of voice, or
singers that have
a small range,
they
normally
come across better on television than a singer like me.
Because my range is quite big, it's hard for
the audio to control it and compress it
down. So I really don't enjoy doing television for that reason – I don't feel like when
you watch me on television, you're getting
the real experience, because you're not
hearing what my voice is actually like."
No, for the full 360-degree Sam Smith
experience, you'll have to catch the blustery Brit on his upcoming return tour of
America, where he'll be playing more sonically-appropriate theaters. But – since the
lad is so gifted – what's it like for him in
smaller venues around the holidays? Like
the family living room, after Christmas
dinner? Are there resounding requests
from relatives to break into seasonal song?
No, they haven't asked me yet," he says.
"And if they did, they'd be receiving an
argument from me instead! But you know
what? I don't do that. I find it really wei