Sam Smith has been doing a lot of interviews to promote his sophomore album The Thrill Of It All but one of the most interesting was with Taffy Brodesser-Akner of The New York Times.
It's worth a full read, but we've highlights five things we learned about Smith from the feature:
He wishes he was more articulate
“I’m not the most eloquent person,” he said. “I didn’t get the best grades in school. I mean, I’m just good at singing.” Later, Smith said: “I just feel like I’m going to offend someone every time I open my mouth.” And, then, this: "The only thing I’d like everyone to know is I’m really sorry if I say the wrong things. I don’t want to offend anyone and my intentions are genuinely pure and good. I’m still trying to figure s*** out and I’d like to be treated like a human. If I make mistakes don’t kill me.”
He hopes to sing like Canada’s Joni Mitchell one day
Smith said he will eventually stop singing falsetto so much. The article reads: “Eventually, he’s going to be like Joni Mitchell and just use the lowest registers. He’s going to come out on stage like Joni on the cover of Both Sides Now, with a glass of wine and a cigarette (yes, by then he’ll be drinking and smoking again).”
He suffers from acid reflux and is losing his hair
Smith lost weight through “intermittent fasting” and with the help of a trainer and nutritionist. He also stopped eating bread. The article noted that before a recent performance, the singer drank Gaviscon. Smith also claimed stress was causing his hair to fall out so he started using Rogaine and Propecia. He said men need to talk about hair loss.
He felt pressure from the whole gay thing
“People forget but no one learns about gay history in school. Nothing,” he explained. “So I didn’t know anything about my history as a gay man and then words like ‘spokesperson’ are being thrown at me when I’ve just brought out my first album. It scared me because I was like, I don’t know anything about being gay, really.”
He cries a lot
The article claims Smith got emotional several times during a two-hour chat. “He cried when he talked about the house he grew up in; when he reminisced about a crush who turned on him; when he talked about his first voice teacher. He cried when he talked about writing ‘Pray,’ a song from his new album, The Thrill of It All. He cried when he talked about the children he met in Mosul, Iraq, on a recent humanitarian mission, and then he looked down at the sparrow tattoo he got on his arm when he returned home, with ‘Be good, be kind’ written in Arabic beneath it, and he cried again. He cried talking about how much he cried when he watched the movie Inside Out. And he cried when he talked about love.”