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Samuel Frederick Smith (born 19 May 1992) is an English singer and songwriter. After rising to prominence in October 2012 by featuring on Disclosure’s breakthrough single “Latch”, which peaked at number eleven on the UK Singles Chart, they were subsequently featured on Naughty Boy’s “La La La”, which became a number one single in May 2013. In December 2013, Smith was nominated for the 2014 Brit Critics’ Choice Award and the BBC’s Sound of 2014 poll, winning both.
Smith’s debut studio album, In the Lonely Hour, was released in May 2014 on Capitol Records UK.The album’s lead single, “Lay Me Down”, was released prior to “La La La”. The album’s second single, “Money on My Mind”, became their second number one single in the UK.The third single, “Stay with Me”, was internationally successful, reaching number one in the UK and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, while subsequent singles “I’m Not the Only One” and “Like I Can” reached the top ten in the UK. The album won four awards, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and nominations for Album of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
For Smith’s and Jimmy Napes’s song “Writing’s on the Wall”, the theme for the James Bond film Spectre (2015), they won the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Smith’s second studio album, The Thrill of It All, was released in November 2017 and debuted atop the UK and US album charts. The lead single, “Too Good at Goodbyes”, reached number one in the UK and Australia and number four in the US. Following the 2018 single “Promises” with Calvin Harris, which peaked at number one in the UK, Smith released “Dancing with a Stranger” with Normani in 2019, which reached the top ten in the UK and the US and was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards, and followed it by releasing a string of commercially successful singles “How Do You Sleep?”, “To Die For”, and “I’m Ready” with Demi Lovato; all of which feature on their third album, Love Goes.
As of April 2022, Smith has sold over 33 million albums and 227 million singles worldwide. Smith’s achievements include four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, and an American Music Award, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. Smith is genderqueer and uses they/them pronoun.
Early life
Samuel Frederick Smith was born on 19 May 1992 in London to Frederick Smith and broker Kate Cassidy, grew up in Great Chishill, Cambridgeshire and attended Thomas More Primary School in the village. They were bullied for “having breasts” as a child and had liposuction at age 12. As part of Youth Music Theatre UK, Smith appeared in the troupe’s 2007 production of Oh! Carol, a musical featuring the music of Neil Sedaka.Before entering the musical theatre, they had been in jazz bands.While studying singing and songwriting under jazz pianist Joanna Eden for a number of years,Smith attended St Mary’s Catholic School in Bishop’s Stortford and was a member of the Bishop’s Stortford Junior Operatics (now Bishops Stortford Musical Theatre Society) and the Cantate Youth Choir.
Music career
2008–2009: Career beginnings with debut singles
Smith released two singles before 2010, “Bad Day All Week” and “When It’s Alright”.
2012–2013: Breakthrough
Smith was featured on the Disclosure song “Latch”, which was released on 8 October 2012 and peaked at No. 11 on the UK Singles Chart. In February 2013, Smith released the first single from their debut album, “Lay Me Down”, and later in the year featured on Naughty Boy’s single “La La La”. It was released on 19 May 2013 and peaked at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Smith’s first EP Nirvana was released the following year. The first song on the EP, titled “Safe with Me”, is produced by Two Inch Punch and was first broadcast on MistaJam’s BBC Radio 1Xtra show on 24 July 2013.The second song on the EP is titled “Nirvana” and is produced by Craze & Hoax and Jonathan Creek. The EP also includes Smith’s acoustic solo version of “Latch” and a live version of “I’ve Told You Now”.Smith released the Disclosure, Nile Rodgers, and Jimmy Napes collaboration “Together” on 25 November 2013 as the only single from Settle: The Remixes.
2014–2016: In the Lonely Hour and international success
Smith performing in Glasgow in 2014
The second single from Smith’s debut album, titled “Money on My Mind”, was released on 16 February 2014. It was announced on 16 December that Smith’s debut studio album, titled In the Lonely Hour, would be released on 26 May 2014 through Capitol Records.Smith described the album as “all about unrequited love” stemming from personal experience, having never been loved back by any previous love interests. The album reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and number two on the Billboard 200, and by 5 November it had become the second biggest selling album of 2014 in the US behind only 1989 by Taylor Swift. In January 2015, In the Lonely Hour was named the second best selling album of 2014 in the UK, behind x by Ed Sheeran. A live version of album track “I’ve Told You Now”, performed at St Pancras Old Church, was made available as a free download as part of an Amazon.com promotion on 27 December 2013. The album track “Make It To Me”, co-written by Howard of Disclosure and Jimmy Napes, was made available as a free download as part of an iTunes Store promotion on 13 January 2014. Smith went on their debut American headlining tour in the second quarter of 2014, with a setlist of primarily new material.
On 20 January 2014, Smith made their American television debut performing “Latch” with Disclosure on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Smith also performed on Saturday Night Live on 29 March 2014, performing the gospel-tinged “Stay with Me” and an acoustic version of “Lay Me Down”.”Stay with Me” reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100.The fourth single from the album, “I’m Not the Only One”, reached number three in the UK and number five in the US.
In June 2014, Smith first appeared on the cover of The Fader in its 92nd issue.In August 2014, their single “Stay with Me” was named Variance Magazine’s Song of Summer. Smith performed “Stay With Me” live at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards on 24 August at The Forum in Inglewood, California.On 15 November 2014, they joined the charity group Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording the latest version of the track “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the 2014 Ebola crisis in Western Africa.
Smith performing “Stay with Me” in Berlin in 2015
In 2015, it came to light that singer Tom Petty, noting similarities between “Stay with Me” and his 1989 hit song “I Won’t Back Down”, had negotiated an out-of-court settlement with Smith in October 2014. Petty and co-composer Jeff Lynne were awarded 12.5 percent of the royalties from “Stay with Me”, and the names of Petty and Lynne joined James John Napier (known professionally as Jimmy Napes) in the ASCAP song credit. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, held on 8 February 2015, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Smith performed “Stay with Me” and also received four Grammy Awards: Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year (for “Stay with Me”) and Best Pop Vocal Album (for In the Lonely Hour). At the 2015 Brit Awards held at The O2 Arena in London on 25 February, they performed “Lay Me Down”, and won the Brit Awards for British Breakthrough Act, and Global Success.
In March 2015, “Lay Me Down” was re-released as the sixth single from the album, peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 (Smith’s third US top 10 single). The same month, Smith recorded another version of the song, featuring John Legend, for the British charity telethon Comic Relief, which reached number one in the UK. At the 2015 Billboard Music Awards on 17 May, Smith received three Billboard Awards: Top Male Artist, Top New Artist, and Top Radio Songs Artist. They featured on Disclosure’s single “Omen”, which was released on 27 July 2015.
Personal life
In May 2014, Smith came out to the public as gay, and acknowledged a relationship—since ended—with actor and model Jonathan Zeizel.At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards when “Stay with Me” won an award for Record of the Year, they said, “I want to thank the man who this record is about, who I fell in love with last year. Thank you so much for breaking my heart because you got me four Grammys!” In October 2017, Smith stated that their latest album, The Thrill of It All, showed “the gay guy I’ve become”. In September 2017, Smith revealed a relationship with actor Brandon Flynn in an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In June 2018, it was announced that Smith and Flynn had split after nine months of dating.
In October 2017, Smith came out as genderqueer, saying “I feel just as much a woman as I am a man”and speaking of a period in their youth where they “didn’t own a piece of male clothing and would wear full makeup while attending school”. In September 2019, they announced a decision to come out as non-binary and change their gender pronouns to they/them, stating, “after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out…”
Smith is the third cousin of singer Lily Allen and actor Alfie Allen. Smith is the godparent of close friend and collaborator Jimmy Napes’ son.
Smith identifies as a feminist.
Smith has struggled with body image issues since their pre-teen years and has been open about this in interviews.
