Sam Smith Speaks About Being Tired Of “Fitting In” and “Afraid” To Express Themselves In Music Amid Release Of New Album

While getting ready for the release of his new album, Sam Smith got personal with Rolling Stone UK as they posed for a magazine cover shoot.

During the photoshoot, the English singer, whose preferred pronouns are they/them, spoke about how their image has changed throughout their career. On their rise to fame at age 22, the singer shared that they felt the need to “fit in” at that young age. 

Things have not changed much as they declared, “being queer in this world is still tough.” 

On the subject of the music industry, the Too Good at Goodbyes singer noted that dropping “all-female clothing” saw a dramatic change in their career. “It just so happened that as I started to explore that, my music started to get picked up,” they revealed.

The singer talked about how they “got tired of pushing” and the drawback of expressing “private” themes within their songs. They felt they needed to “break out” from that at some point.

Sam, a Grammy-nominated singer with their fourth album launching on January 27, has since entering the music industry, made history as the first non-binary person to top global charts. Another queer artist who has attained this height is the German singer and songwriter Kim Petras.

Sam, 30, says their success has shown that “queer music is for everyone” even though they were “afraid to express certain things” in their music, like their sex. Moving away from where they were in their 20s into their 30s, the artist notes that Too Good for Goodbyes and Stay With Me were “an authentic expression of where they were at in their 20s.”

However, their fourth album, Gloria, centers around learning and relearning the art of self-love. In one of the songs from the album, Love Me More, the artist sings about the courage of learning not to hate oneself and how better they’ve gotten at doing that. 

While posing for show-stopping photos, Sam is seen rocking an array of stylish outfits. The outfits include T-shirts featuring chart-topping artists like Lady Gaga, ABBA, Rihanna, and Britney Spears.

For their fourth studio album, Sam will be going on a 27-date tour across North America. After that, they will be starting a Europe tour in April. The artist also announced on their Instagram page that the Europe tour would be followed by another tour kicking off July 25 in Miami and finishing on September 25 in Ciudad de Mexico.