Can Sam Smith ever afford to be happy?

Sam Smith holds his four awards at the 57th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles this month. Picture: Frederic J Brown/AFP
Source: AFP

Now there is only one. His name has been transformed almost overnight from that of a pedestrian everyman to a burgeoning legend, evoking the likes of Sam Cooke and James Brown and, by default, their old-school appeal, from a time when a singer was just a man in a suit with a great voice, crooning about love and loss.

As I walk down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Sam Smith is everywhere: staring out from the cover of Rolling Stone in the 7-Eleven like a doe-eyed George Michael; his album stacked next to the cash register at Starbucks; a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show; on a billboard, dwarfing passing Chevies, his eyes and quiff lowered to the ground, in the grip of melancholy.

In only two years, this 22-year-old Brit has gone from being a bathroom attendant in a city bar, to that lofty superlative, “the biggest male artist in the world”.

His album about unrequited love In the Lonely Hour entered the US Billboard chart at No. 2 in November (the highest entry for a debut from a British singer), was at No. 1 in the UK and US album charts and sold more than a million last year.

His debut single Stay With Me sold more than 3.5 million copies and he won four Grammys at this month’s awards, including record and song of the year. All this without the hype of The X Factor or a private school education.

Physically, Smith is unremarkable. When I bump into him backstage at a gig in LA where he is due to play that night, I mistake him, in his white T-shirt and jeans, for a sound engineer. He is 188cm of slightly squidgy stockiness, a bulky package of congenial warmth.

But his face is expressive and there is something in his almond-shaped eyes — intense, lachrymose, likely to brim at any moment — that draws you in. His music is neither groundbreaking nor cool; it cuts across age barriers with raw emotion.

To really understand the effect of Smith, you need to hear him live. He is all about the voice.

Each of his In the Lonely Hour hits — Stay With Me, Lay Me Down, I’m Not the Only One — is punctuated with autobiographical outpourings: “I wrote this album because I fell in love with a straight guy last year and he didn’t love me back … Just before I wrote Good Thing, I deleted his number … I wrote Money on My Mind because someone in the music industry pissed me off …”

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Sam Smith grew up in a female-dominated household and relates more to women. Picture: Supplied
Source: Supplied

He launches into a soul version of La La La, the Naughty Boy track on which he featured, which went to No. 1 in May 2013 and paved the way, along with his breakout vocals on Disclosure’s Latch in October 2012, for the release of his solo album. Then he sings a cover of My Funny Valentine. Somehow all of this is delivered without a whiff of cheesiness.

The next morning, Smith and I sit with our feet dangling in the hotel pool, the sky above us unsure whether it wants to rain or shine, reflecting Smith’s ambivalent mood. He is anxious about the upcoming Grammys (which he blitzed with four awards).

“I don’t like the idea that if we came away with nothing, we’d be disappointed, because, in my eyes, we’ve already won.” (Smith prefers to say “we”: he has three managers.) “I’ve sold so many records, played so many arenas.”

So he’s not feeling on top of the world?

“It’s really up and down, you know. I haven’t stopped for two years. There are moments when
I love it and there are moments where I …” he trails off. “I wanted this life for so long, for a range of things. My insecurities. The need for music to be my therapy. The attention. The glamour. Getting the love. If all you want is fame and there is no creativity behind that want, you’re f—ed. This world is a monster.”

Smith says he usually skips awards afterparties and instead goes to McDonald’s for a burger. Awards ceremonies have been almost back to back since he won last year’s Critics’ Choice Award at the Brits, and gongs at the Mobos and the American Music Awards. That’s a lot of burgers.

He is currently on a carb-free, dairy-free diet. I’m disappointed that he’s not more righteous about his right to be a size “normal” — in the words of Adele, with whom he has been consistently compared, he is “making music for the ears not the eyes”.

He is not remotely fat, just not toned and packaged to within an inch of his life.

“I do want to be skinny. I’m trying.” He giggles, as we prod each other like two kids in a tickle fight. Smith is not the sombre, introverted character he exorcises in his music. He is gentle but cheeky, like a giant puppy prone to fits of depression. He confesses he sometimes wishes he had abs like Justin Bieber.

Sam debut single Stay With Me sold 3.5 million copies.
Source: Supplied

“Bieber and I had a sing-off in the toilets on the Ellen show a few days ago. I was doing my vocal warm-up and through the wall on the other side someone started mimicking me, so I started going higher and he was going higher, too. I didn’t know it was Bieber until he came up afterwards.”

Smith has quickly attracted a celebrity following through the sheer quality of his voice: Beyoncé compared it to “butter”; Mary J Blige asked him to co-write songs on her new album, The London Sessions; most surreal of all, Lady Gaga commented on her “strange, visceral reaction” to his music.

Smith was given three days’ detention when he was 17 for wagging school to see Gaga at London’s O2 Arena. During the punishment he drew a dream board of his ambitions: a picture of himself with a No. 1 record, another holding a Brit Award, another playing at The O2 — all of which have come true.

On the subject of his growing celebrity circle he says: “Sometimes I have this horrible feeling that maybe people are more interested in what Kim Kardashian smells like than my music. She smells f—ing glorious, by the way, she’s like an angel. I was with her last night, her whole family came to my gig. I saw a video of them singing along. We’re all just people. Even Beyoncé, when you meet her. You build this person up in your mind to be this deity. But they’re just people.

“Fame is a very warped thing.”

Smith has already had some experience of the warpedness of that world. Controversial US radio host Howard Stern recently ranted that Smith was: “An ugly motherf—er. He’s fat. Is he gay?”

Smith now says: “People make comments about me all the time and it hurts me. I read it and I’m offended by it. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not. I’m hugely vulnerable.

“But I don’t want to have any barriers because that feeling of honesty and connection with my fans is just the best in the world.”

Sam made friends with a seal at Sea World during holidays in Australia. Picture: Instagram
Source: Supplied

Smith is a curious mix of fiercely driven and highly sentient. “I’m very emotional, but I’ve also got a massive fire, a hunger for success, for my music to be heard, which comes from my mum.”

He grew up in the village of Great Chishill in Cambridgeshire, and is a perfect blend of the polarised qualities of his parents. His ambition comes from his mother Kate, a former bank clerk who was talent-spotted for a trading job in the City. He inherited his sensitive side from his father Fred, a fruit and vegetable stall owner who became a househusband and looked after Smith and his younger sisters, Lily and Mabel.

“I grew up in a female-dominated household and I relate more to women, but my dad is also in touch with his feminine side. He gave me an emotional poem before I went on stage at Madison Square Garden recently about being yourself. I just burst into tears.”

His pro-woman upbringing manifested itself in his love of power divas such as Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé from an early age. His parents took his ambition to become a singer, aged eight, seriously and enrolled him in lessons. He attributes his range to obsessively practising scales and the desire to bend his voice to the heights of his female musical heroines.

His father dedicated his life to his son’s career, ferrying him between classes and taking courses to become a personal trainer to work on his son’s physique. (Smith now has his own bodyguard/trainer, Adi, and says he feels a little guilty that he’s taken away his dad’s role.) It’s still painful for him that, in the newspapers at least, a public blow to his mother’s career was attributed to his young musical ambitions.

In 2008, she was sacked for “gross misconduct” and when she sued for almost $ 3 million, the Daily Mail ran the story under the headline: “City banker is ‘sacked for spending too much company time on son’s pop dream’.”

“She was treated so unfairly,” he says. “But what it did was really give me the hunger to look after her. She deserves the world and that’s what I’m trying to do, give it to her.”

The subsequent loss of family friends, who disappeared once the money dwindled, has prepped him, he says, for the ways of the music industry.

“I’m prepared for this all to fail,” he laughs.

“I think, if this all goes down the sh—–, I can still say I once sold five million records.”

As the only openly gay teenager in his neighbourhood, he was often subjected to abuse.

“I felt isolated. I was called ‘faggot’ many times. I worked part-time in a shop. There was a man in the village who had a massive issue with me being gay and didn’t want me serving him.”

Sam did a Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb over the Christmas break. Picture: Instagram
Source: Supplied

Ironically, things got worse when he moved to London at 18. “I got punched in the neck in the street. I used to wear a bit of make-up. I had pink earphones on and was talking really loud. It was definitely a homophobic attack.”

Though Smith had come out at an early age, he had no real sexual experiences until he left home. “To the age of 16, I’d never met another gay person. When I moved to London, the gay scene was a real eye-opener. Some things were amazing, but other things are very dark.”

He had a lot of one-night stands but “wasn’t very good at them”. He tended to fall in love with straight men — the first was a boy at school, two years his senior, and later came his unrequited love for his manager, Elvin Smith, who he wrote about in In the Lonely Hour.

“I’ve stopped falling for straight men now. After the last one, there’s no way it’s going to happen again. The record was therapy, closure. It saved me.”

I warn Smith never to fall in love and live happily ever after.

“I know,” he chuckles. “I’ve written a song about another person recently. You know I split up with someone a few weeks ago?” He is referring to model Jonathan Zeizel, who he met on the set of his video for Like I Can and had been dating over Christmas.

“Nothing dramatic happened. I made a mistake by posting pictures of us on Instagram and making it seem more serious than it was. I flew him to Australia and we had a nice time.”

He tells me about nights on the town and skinny-dipping. “We just weren’t very compatible, but I’ve learned I need to hold off before I start getting the public involved. I would say it was a relationship, but I still feel like I haven’t had a proper boyfriend yet.”

Fred Smith recently chided his son for being too honest in the press. And I worry a little, too, about all this talk of no barriers and giving all of himself away. “This is where my fire comes out,” he says. “Because I stand up and I say, ‘Well, f— this.’ I’m not going to be a robot. I’m not going to limit what I say so I’ll please more people. My life is my life and things are going to happen and I’m going to document it and say how I feel. I don’t play a character, I’m just myself.”

Smith drops his head and looks at his feet in the pool. “I want to be a different type of pop star. I want to be a pop star who’s not Photoshopped, who’s straight-on human … Honesty is timeless, I’m just trying to make music that stands the test of time. So that, in 400 years, when a little kid who’s gay listens to In the Lonely Hour, or my next record, he will be inspired.”

OZ VISIT: STAY WITH ME SINGER SAM SMITH SHOWS OFF NEW MAN

FOUR THINGS SAM SMITH LEARNED FROM SUDDEN SUCCESS

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- London Evening Standard

Sam Smith appears at Margaret Court Arena on April 30. Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Originally published as Can Sam Smith ever afford to be happy?
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