Sam Smith is currently in Adelaide, Australia, following a performance at the d’Arenberg Cube winery, and spoke with Billboard about his fourth studio album. “‘Gloria’ is an expression of the liberation I’ve been feeling over the last few years, when it comes to my sexuality, my emotions, my spirit,” Smith said. “It doesn’t feel nerve-racking this time around,” Smith explains. “I made a very conscious decision with this record to not bring anything out until I just loved it, in and out, and didn’t want to be in a position where I was putting something out and was thinking, ‘are people going to like this’? I wanted to be in a position where I put something out and I felt I didn’t care if anyone else liked it, because it’s about whether I like it. Because it’s what I make.”
According to Billboard, “Gloria release “Unholy” featuring Kim Petras is a stone-cold hit, blasting to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Smith’s first U.S. leader; and it logged multiple weeks atop the Official U.K. Singles Chart and Australia’s ARIA Chart. More than a decade has passed since Smith’s career took flight, when they contributed those honey-dripped, other-worldly vocals to Disclosure’s 2012 breakthrough track “Latch”. A debut LP, In The Lonely Hour, arrived in 2014 and peaked at No. 1 in the U.K., and No. 2 in the U.S. Its followup from 2017, The Thrill of It All hit the summit on both sides of the Atlantic, confirming Smith’s ascent as a bonafide star.”
