The New Yorker Radio Hour - Sam Smith on Their New Album, “Hazel Eyes”

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Sam Smith burst onto the music scene in 2014 with their début album, “In the Lonely Hour.” It was one of the best-selling albums of the decade and won Smith three Grammys, for Best Pop Vocal Album and both Record and Song of the Year, for the massive hit “Stay With Me.” Smith’s early hits were ballads of heartbreak and unrequited love, so their new album marks something of a change: it’s an album of love songs, requited in this case. Many were written about Smith’s fiancé, the fashion designer Christian Cowan. Smith talked about the writing process that led to their new album “Hazel Eyes,” which comes out August 21st, with New Yorker Radio Hour producer Jeffrey Masters. Further reading: “Sam Smith’s Sugary Loneliness and the Choir Effect,” by Doreen St. Félix “Getting the James Bond Song Right,” by Ian Crouch   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Sam Smith burst very big onto the music scene in 2014 with a debut album called In the Lonely Hour. It was one of the best-selling albums of the decade, and it won Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year for Stay With Me. Sam Smith's early hits were ballads of heartbreak and unrequited love. And so their new album marks something of a change. It's an album of love songs, in this case, very much requited. The album is called Hazel Eyes, and Sam Smith sat down with our producer, Jeffrey Masters.

So take me back. I know that you grew up singing around the house and with your parents. But what was, like, the moment when you realized that it wasn't just your parents, like, being nice, that you actually had a good voice? I think that I went to this holiday camp called Haven Holidays in the UK and it's like affordable holidays where you go and stay in caravans in like a caravan park

and I went with my friend Beth my best friend Beth I came out to her when I was 10 but she was also the person who kind of forced me to sing because she was a singer herself, she loved singing And there was a talent show for children at this holiday camp. And how old were you? Me and her must have been like nine or ten. Okay.

And she was singing. And if you won the talent competition, you won loads of tokens so you can go get those of sweets from the store, like free sweets and toys. And me and her stood up together and we sang Heroes by Mariah Carey. And I just remember being with her and just seeing the whole room kind of, of erupt afterwards with me and her singing. And then I went in another holiday camp, a year later, I went and sang the same song alone. And I won an award for it in this holiday camp and I just started to basically just sing to different rooms, different people, and just the response I was

getting was crazy. Wow. Yeah, it was a good time, but also always stressful for me. Why stressful? I just, I've always been freaked out by my voice. It's like it's a freaky thing. It's like I don't feel the same way that people feel when they hear it. And I don't hear when I hear myself back, I'm very critical. So it's always, you know, I'm very hard on myself as a singer. So when I come on stage, I think I've done a bad job and people like, that was the best. You've ever sounded and I'm like, I'm so confused.

But in recordings, though, you recognize how you sound, right? I have now, but it took me, I first recorded myself when I was 13, and my first recording ever did was me singing When You Believe by Whitney Houston, Roy, Kerry, and I sang every single part by myself. And I went in the booth after recording it, and they like comp the vocal, and I sat down and I heard myself sing, and I burst into tears because I thought it was the worst thing ever. and I was like, in my head I sound so much better than that. And then what came after that was many, many years of me having this dysphoria with my voice and trying to hear the goodness. I also was wondering, you said that when you were growing up, and particularly in high school, you would wear makeup and dresses and traditionally feminine clothing.

And yet, on your first album, when you were first introduced the public, you were not dressing feminine. Was that something you intentionally toned down? No, it wasn't, it wasn't for me an intentional thing. I think now I look back on it, I was, I moved to London when I was 18 years old and I, I've spoken on this before, but I had a homophobic attack happened to me when I was at 18 and it kind of triggered me to start wearing less makeup when I was walking around the streets and stuff because I used to be wear so much. and as I started to wear less makeup, I started suddenly people started to notice my singing more when I was trying to sing, and then my manager, during that first album,

kind of came on board, and he was encouraging of me, he went shopping with me once, and encouraged me to, like, wear this type of coat or that thing, and I, like, put it on, and I would walk into rooms, and doors just started to open to me. You know, the suits I were,

I was wearing, it was like, it was drag for me. So I was like really enjoying the wearing something different and not, and not being, not having to deal with everyone looking at you, you know, the negativity that would come with presenting as femme as a child. I think I was enjoying that not happening. But I think after my first albums when I kind of, I was like, oh, okay, this is like an identity now that people think this is me. and if I start dressing femme like I used to,

that's going to be something that people have to be educated on, you know? And my album, first time, was so massive. That world stage in which I had to make that announcement just got bigger and bigger and bigger. That's so interesting because I know you grew up in a village, I believe it was like less than thousand people. Yes. The stereotype would be that it would be less safe to present feminine

in this small village, but more safe in London, but it was not the case for you. No, I mean, I was very, looking back on it, I was very brave. And I had an amazing, I have a very strong mother, and I have a very emotional, strong, sensitive father. And they really just let me express myself. But there was definitely, you know, people would say things in the village for sure, and I worked in like the village store once, and there was like, there was, crazy experiences in there where I had, for me when I was younger, it wasn't easy, but it was when it

came, when I came to London, it became dangerous. And that's when I started to kind of, I guess, tone things down a little bit for my safety. It was my reasoning. And you were getting subtle signals from the industry about when you were dressing more masculine. I guess what I'm wondering is, like, do you hear anything explicitly, like, said to you, like, by people? Yeah, I mean, as I started to transition forward and I guess backwards into wearing the things I wore when I was younger and publicly wearing makeup, moving in a more femme way, that's when I started to hear things within the industry. And people would say things that was hard. Like what?

It was basically alluding to things not maybe being. attractive because they're feminine. And luckily for me, I ignored that and I pushed forward. And then when I got the opportunity, I told them that that was wrong and encouraged them to educate themselves a little bit, you know. In hindsight, do you think that early success that you had would have been possible had you been presenting femme? I think it would have been possible.

I believe in myself and my music and my voice, enough to say that I think I would have built, I would have eventually probably been signed and had moments. I don't think it would have been on that scale. I don't, no, it wouldn't have been on that scale. Maybe eventually, I think we're in different times now. And that's something I've had to, you know, come to a piece, with because it's not like I was hiding.

That's the thing that's hard for me. It's that I find it hard when I see, you know, people very falsely say that I came out when I was 21. I did not. I came out when I was 10 and I was a femme gay from a very, very young age and very out and very out and very out. You're not to say it's not brave to not come out, but I just, I don't like, that it's become part of my story

that I came out when I was 21. And then also I think with the way the things have gone, I don't like this idea that, you know, maybe I was hiding who I truly was. It wasn't that. I was just experimenting in a different outfit during that period and that outfit suddenly triggered doors to open for me

and I ran through those doors and I have no regrets. You know, going off that, listening to the new album, Hazel Eyes, there are so many references to queerness and a dating men and it made me think back to your song, Him, from 2017.

In 2017, yeah, that song came out. The chorus is, it is him I love. Don't you try and tell me that I love. And it was shocking to hear. Yeah, what? Right? And it was a real risk to put that out at that time. Does it still feel like now, you know,

almost 10 years later, a risk to put out like such explicitly queer music. Yeah, I wrote him as a response to the the kind of feedback from In the Lonely Hour about the kind of neutrality maybe of some of the pronouns and things like that. I really wanted to write him because I was like, this wasn't like an intentional thing of hiding for me within The Lonely Hour. And I wrote him to be like, I'm cool saying him.

It's all good and I did. And it was, I love that song and I love that moment. But you're right. I felt like I couldn't, I feel like on this album I'm singing about a man and saying that more proudly than ever because it's a love that's reciprocated. And in The Lonely Hour,

I was in love with a straight guy who was not gay and we didn't hook up. It was pure unrequired love. Yeah, that always goes as well. You know? And so, yeah, but so it wasn't, it was a queer record, as for me, the singer in The Lonely Hour, but the actual content was about me being in love with a straight

man, you know, it wasn't reciprocated. So I feel like now with Hazelize, I'm singing about a man that loves me. And so there's almost more pride, I guess, in this record than ever before for me in expressing those words. And you've always been very explicit that your songs come from a very personal place. Is it okay to assume that my guy is about your partner, Christian? Yes, yes, yes. So tell me, what was it like when he heard the song for the first time? Well, Christian loves hyperpop and really heavy metal, like, pop. Okay.

So that's not this song. It's not this song. But he loves this song and he finds the beauty in it. And he adores it. He's been so beautiful and encouraging through the whole process of this record. And it's been this balancing act of, you know, how much do you share, not wanting to share too much, but also, like, It's about him, and it's a love letter to him as a record of this time that we're in, you know.

At what point in the songwriting process did you play it for him? I probably played him that one a few days after I wrote it. Yeah, I show him things all the time. Wow. And you mentioned that a lot of your earlier music was about unrequited love. You know, the Sam Smith was searching for love from other people and from themselves as well. Yeah. I imagine that's a very fruitful place to write from.

Yeah. So for this new album, was it a challenge to write from a place of, like, I'm happy? I thought it would be. I really did. I was scared. I was always very scared of falling in love when I was younger, especially after in the lonely hour, you know, doing so well and changing my life in so many ways. I was like, I better stay miserable. Like, but I knew that when it was time and I was truly in love and I could really pull from that place that I didn't want to be.

scared of that. I found it a very deepening and enriching thing to pull from as an artist. In this new album, there was new sounds I haven't heard from you. There's a little bit of country in there. Obviously, there's a big ballads. There's, I mean, there's R&B, there's dance. I don't have enough fingers to list all of like the genre as Sam Smith has sang in. So if anything is possible, like how do you like describe what like a Sam Smith song is or isn't? I think that to describe a Sam Smith song, I think my music is dramatic and I think it is, there's always, I feel like, some sort of tether to romance in a lot of my music. But I feel like my music is free from those boundaries of genre a little bit,

just like I feel like I'm free from boundaries too, as a queer person in the way that I express and dress. My music kind of is no different to my expression of myself. Like some days I wear, you know, trousers and a jacket, and then some days I'm wearing a beautiful gown. Like, it's the same with the music. For me, with Hazelais, like, I find it, you know, when people say there's so many genres in it, I'm like, oh, God, yeah, there is. Because I felt like with Hazelite, for the first time ever, I'm actually contained. meaning myself a little bit more. But there is so many genres on the album

and so many things. I just let myself be free when it comes to those things and I love that about myself and my music. The new album, Hazelais, it's a big departure from the last four albums. This album, both musically and the content of the songs, is a new chapter. Did you go into it with that goal?

Yeah, I mean, for me, this album was the biggest challenge as an artist because the way that I'd been making albums up to this point was in a very pop and fabulously commercial way. I don't see a negative to that word for me. I love commercial pop music. But I produced a lot of the record and was hands on with the making of the record more than ever before.

And I wanted to stick to, for me, a cohesive feel that you could put the record on and stay in that world, whatever that world would be. So I set myself that task, and it was a huge task. As you took a lot of courage, especially within the industry and the way that people are used to me making music. Wait, wait, sorry. I'm a layperson who doesn't understand it.

Why did that take courage to do that? Because I'm a pop artist, and the way that I would make music, you could hear the promise in the sound of the music that it could be a possible success. I don't write music for that reason, by the way. Even if it sounds like I do when you listen to my music, that's not my intention. I love pop music. But when I'm aiming to write like a pop song, you know, you want to lean into the catchiness of it.

So people get used to their being hooks within the song. And this album, when I was writing it, I stayed away from those, I think, choices sometimes to challenge myself and say, let's find a different type of hook. maybe a hook that comes two minutes into the song instead of 20 seconds into the song, you know, and something that builds to the greatest hook of all time. I think my guy builds to the most beautiful hook I've ever written. He's my guy. So it was just about structuring things differently in a way that pop heads and commercial people within the industry, you know, aren't used to hearing as much.

And so that felt I had to do that. Singer and songwriter, Sam Smith, more in a moment. In terms of the writing process, I have a question, but I want to play a clip, or two clips from No God, from your last album. So I want to hear two things, which is that there's the background nose. And then there's also this vocal distortion. Those nose is so nice.

Yeah, this distortion. So, like, in the writing process, are you hearing that in your head and putting that down, or does that all come later? That came in, that all comes for me in the studio afterwards, building the world around the lead vocal. So I put down the vocal when we've written the song, and then I, if the song requires it, I become my own choir, I become my own hype man, I become my own, like, I become. my own sound effect. Like I create sounds and instruments with my voice. Give me an example of something.

I don't know. You can make drum beats through your voice and you can create almost synth pads with your voice if you take it and then the computer changes it. And so, you know, the Hazelizer record I just made, I did that a little bit with backing choirs

and also singing parts. I mean, all over Hazelizer's, most of the production on it, on it that I do is me singing parts, two players, and then then recreating it, playing it on another instrument. So that's what I do in the studio is I just vocally sing parts, sing things I hear, and then musicians would take that and interpret that or copy it. And so that was Hazelais, which was more like live people on instruments. But like the record I'm currently making right now after Hazel's... Wait, wait, wait, you're...

Hazel Ice has not come out yet, but you still have another record you're working on. on other records. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm, I'm inspired to do it, and I'm, and it's more electro and, um, more intense. And that's, you know, you know, I, I just make all different weird sounds and scream into the microphone and free myself and sometimes those things get turned into wild things you would never imagine. Is the new, new, new record, the electro pop one, is that drawing from like this current phase of being in love as well? It is, but it's maybe more in a more naughty, playful way. Hazelize is like this deep confession,

a traditional, a new traditional queer love romance album. That's how I see it. And then I've just, whilst I've been making that, I'm also really hungry to shake my tities and, you know, encapsulate some of the really, the way that I feel in my relationship,

where I feel I'm still 34 and I'm, I love to dance and I'm free and I'm still inspired by like intense hyperpop electrosounds. And so I'm also doing that too. Wow. I mean, that reminds me of unholy, which is arguably the biggest song of your career. It went to number one. Grammy, and you've said that you got a lot of pushback from your team about releasing that. What was their reasoning for not releasing it?

It wasn't that they didn't want to release it. It was that they wanted it. They didn't want it as the first single. And the battle that I started to get into a battle because I was like, you're not hearing what I'm hearing. I then started to realize this is just like there's something about the sex in the song and the sexuality in the music and also the fun and lightheartedness of it that I think just challenged some people's tastes when it came to me.

I think that, you know, Unholy broke down what people think of me when they think of Sam Smith. And up until that point, a lot of people thought that my greatest strength was to sing heartbreak ballads. And so I think that Unholy challenged that. was just a huge moment that kind of popped that bubble in my life, and I was just so desperate to pop that bubble for so long. Unholy really encapsured

my playful side and my humor in the music. And I just, you know, I championed that song from the beginning. I mean, I wrongly would have just assumed that you could release anything you wanted. I can. Oh, I can release whatever I want.

But I also, I listen to people around me and what they think sometimes. You know, like, I do. It's like, I think in the pop world, I've actually enjoyed that back and forth sometimes with people around me. And sometimes it's actually done really well for me. And, you know, I think labels get a very bad rep a lot of the time, and I understand why they do.

There's a lot of issues. But I've worked with some unbelievably talented people. I'm incredibly creative people who really love music and they love pop music. And so I, you know, I honor those relationships sometimes and I like to hear what they think. And, you know, with Hazel Eyes, I've taken a step back from that a bit more. But it's a time and a place for those things. And, yeah. Did the success of Unholy, like, give you permission to, like, to make Hazelize, like, I don't know what I want to say, weirder,

But like to go bigger and like further on it? It just unholy's given me permission just to do what I want now in my life. And it's not that it gave me permission with everyone else because I could have always done what I wanted to do as an artist. I was never trapped in a label situation where I was being forced to do anything I wasn't allowed to do. But it gave me seeing people's reaction to that song and them feeling me and my energy through that music, I was like that you get me. I feel like I can express all shades and colors of myself now

with no kind of fear. You mentioned you're 34. How has your voice changed as you've gotten older? Oh, my God, loads. I mean, it's lower than I can sing lower than ever before. My higher register is, I still sing in the heights, but it's a different tone. It's kind of a fuller sound. In my 20s, I had five.

You know, I on and off smoked a little bit in my 20s, never like full-time smoker by on and off smoked. I don't know if that had too much of an impact. I think the biggest impact on my voice and the changes have been the workload of singing. I think that I have sacrificed notes in my register from the amount of work and travel and touring and singing that I've done in my life. Really? Yeah, I mean, I've done, I can't countless, that probably near to a thousand shows. I sing full out the whole time for two hours, you know, projecting to an audience.

It takes a toll on your instrument after a while. I was curious because in the final track, to be free, you open that track singing, pray your heart be lighter, brave and free like mine. And the quality of your voice, it isn't something I'd heard before. Yeah, it's a different, that was a different shape. I was kind of like the sound E like that. I put my mouth into like a shape like that when I was singing.

And then I realized that if I just stay there and sing the verse, this a completely different timbre came out. So you're still learning like new things your voice can do. Yeah, my voice is going to change forever. I like now that I sound completely different in some songs. to other songs. I wish and hope for people to see that as a part of the Sam Smith music is that you don't never know necessarily what you're going to get. And technically, the beginning of To Be Free, is that you, like,

mixing your head and chest voice? Is that falsetto? Like, what is that? I think it's, like, a bit of falsetto with chest, kind of mix together. Okay. It's also just the position of the day. Like, when I sing that song now, That recording, by the way, was, I sang that before I wrote on Holy, which is wild. Whoa. Yeah. Oh, so that's been sitting on your hard drive. I wrote that the week I changed my pronouns.

I wrote to be free. And so it stayed that song kind of stuck with me. And I was like, I'm going to return to this feeling, and I'm going to make a whole album in this world. And I did. We mentioned earlier in the conversation that my guy is written about your partner, Christian. and Cowan. He's a fashion designer. It was reported recently that you're engaged. Congratulations. Thank you.

Can I ask who proposed to who? Oh, they are secrets. I will never tell. Not even in the music, I would never say. It's just too special. Thank you for the great conversation. Thank you. Sam Smith, their album Hazel Eyes comes out later this month,

and Jeffrey Masters is a producer at the New Yorker Radio Hour. That's our program for this week. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boteen and assistance from Michael, May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.