Since breaking by a decade in the past with their impassioned vocal on Disclosure’s churning membership smash “Latch,” Sam Smith has been one in every of pop’s premier torch singers. Their capability to precise craving, whether or not by utilizing their gasped higher register or their voice’s smoothed-out decrease reaches, lends itself naturally to ballads, or glumly kinetic songs just like the 2019 Normani collaboration “Dancing With a Stranger.”
Smith, a charismatic performer and expert interpreter of lyrics, has usually appeared a bit boxed in by the sad-singer superb. In 2022, they exploded any expectations that may have hemmed them in with the brash, hypocrisy-skewering Kim Petras duet “Unholy.” The glitchy synthpop minimize revels in exposing the guilt of a household man who spends his free time flouting his marriage vows; it cracked open Smith’s persona, too, permitting them to chronicle life on the darkish facet, accompanied by a choir recalling these had backed them on meeker, extra downhearted songs.
Gloria, Smith’s fourth album, builds on the inspiration laid down by that chart-topping single. The album opens with “Love Me Extra,” which initially takes on a singsong melody that remembers “Keep With Me,” the gospel-tinged ballad that cemented Smith as a pop artist to look at upon its launch in 2013. However its lyrics point out stress inside: “Have you ever ever felt like being another person,” Smith sings, “Feeling just like the mirror isn’t good to your well being?” Because the tune settles into an ambling groove, with Smith repeating the mantra “just a bit bit/ love me extra,” Smith additional involves phrases with the model of themself who put up a entrance whereas letting barbs eat away at their self-worth.
It’s a becoming opening to Gloria, a compact, steadily flowing assortment of pop songs that showcase Smith’s vocal versatility and private development. Smith’s experiences as a queer one who was raised Catholic thread by the album, and never simply on the family-portrait-smashing “Unholy.” The simmering “No God” is Smith’s try at reaching somebody drowning in their very own dogma, with Smith attempting to assist their opponent understand their vanity earlier than it’s too late; it’s adopted by a snippet from activist filmmaker Lilli Vincenz’s 1970 documentary Homosexual and Proud that briefly, but forcefully, displays on the compounded ache closeted folks really feel once they undergo romantic loss. The title monitor, which Smith composed with singer-songwriter Foy Vance, is a beautiful hymn that salutes self-love, with Smith’s voice hovering above their accompaniment as they urge anybody listening to “be your self so loud tonight/ they’ll hear you from the celebs.”
Smith has introduced alongside a number of friends for Gloria along with Petras. The soul-baring Canadian singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez performs Smith’s foil on the low-lit “Good”; Smith’s clear cry and Reyez’s acid-dipped yawp come collectively like pure opposites, with Reyez coaxing out Smith’s concern of exhibiting their flaws because the music crests into guitar-solo-assisted chaos. She additionally seems on the sultry “Gimme,” by which Smith provides totally into the temptations supplied by Reyez and the Jamaican singer-songwriter Koffee; its sparse association and sinuous beat make it really feel ready-made for blasting at sweaty, late-hour events.
Gloria closes with “Who We Love,” a duet with pop guru Ed Sheeran that pivots on the lyric “we love who we love”—which seems like a tautology, however is given complexity by what’s preceded it. Smith’s voice is in full flower right here, contrasting properly with Sheeran’s slighter vocal, whereas the lyrics slyly have a look at how issues that straight folks take as a right—“holding fingers on the street/ no must be discreet”—are nonetheless liberatory for queer folks realizing their full selves. On Gloria, Smith—one of many world’s most recognizable voices—has an identical expertise, greedy how being true to themselves could make their very own instrument’s energy even mightier.
