Capitol
Pop, 2023

I really like Sam Smith’s debut album, but I lost interest in them and their music in the years since, because they started to become boring. Their voice started to take on a shrill, whiny timbre too, which was unfortunate.

Hence, I didn’t pay them much thought, until they turned into a giant red lollipop with Satan’s horns or something.

I’m not going to lie: I tend to find many pop acts more interesting and fun when they are in their cray cray phase. Miley Cyrus, anyone? So Sam Smith is cray cray now? Ooh, this could be fun…

I had high hopes for Gloria. Sam Smith has embraced a more flamboyant, gender-bending style that is so Baby’s First Paris Is Burning meets Hot Topic, and I am hoping that their music would be a glorious kind of mess and chaos that will show a fun, dirty side of the formerly boring purveyor of foghorn ballads and forgettable dance tunes.

Sadly, this album isn’t much of a departure from their usual repertoire.

Notable tracks include Unholy, a joyfully filthy dirty about men on the lowdown prowling for fun behind their women’s back, but that song is an odd duck in that it is a song that doesn’t have a climax. Sam Smith sings their verse, then there is the chorus, then Kim Petras comes in with the second verse, then they repeat the chorus a few times in the exact same manner as past choruses… and then the song just ends.

Where’s the splooge kaboom? This song is like sex with some bloke in which one only realizes has come to an end when the bloke falls on top of them and makes a loud snore. Daddy came to the body shop for some unholy fun and… daddy just goes home?

Unholy sticks out like a big red hard-on in how different it is from the rest of the songs in terms of vibe and beat, but sadly, that one sort of goes flaccid halfway through and I have no idea whether that’s because of me or Sam Smith.

Their duet with Ed Sheeran, Who We Love, is clearly here because, well, music by and with Ed Sheeran gets attention on TikTok and what not, but eh, it’s still an Ed Sheeran song. The vocals are superb, however, and Sam Smith’s powerful, clear voice complements Mr Sheeran’s more boyish tenor perfectly.

The rest of the album just sort of blends together into a mass of forgettable ballads and mid- to uptempo tunes that I’ve heard from them many times already. These songs are okay, but that’s the thing, these songs are just okay.

Perhaps I set myself up by expecting something transgressive here, for the album is actually very conventional and radio friendly.

Still, the title track is an impeccable standout. It is a Gregorian chant-like song that is so sweeping and epic, with breathtaking soaring vocals that take me to lovely places in my head… and then it’s over in just below two minutes. How could they do this to me?

This an immaculate, magnificent, religious experience just begging for Sam Smith to perform it while wearing a nun’s habit headpiece and absolutely nothing else, sporting a huge bush down there that would make any porn actor from the 1980s proud. The fact that it’s so short… ugh, talk about a hate crime against humanity.

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