something about that song just from the minute we did it it was like it felt like a magical thing a magical moment everyone i played it to my mum and dad hated it did they ever say why no they didn't i mean they love it now because it's got them a apple house essentials sam smith music's most influential artists and the stories behind their songs we're talking to sam smith right now and we're going through select essentials from a brilliant
playlist on apple music you know um two albums with a third one coming this is getting deeper and deeper by the by the moment um and i'd love to talk to you about some of the ones that really stand out for you and for your fans and i guess the obvious place to start is a song that that sort of changed your life which is actually actually belongs to someone else but sits on your essentials but you're such an essential feature on it which is latch
which i mean has traveled and becomes such an anthem in so many different formats and different ways and it means a lot to people what does it mean to you now in 20 20 years after it came out it means more to me now than it meant to me then
it's a weird record actually it's a very strange thing i don't i remember not liking it at first because i didn't listen to dance music so i didn't know what the hell it was i didn't even know her disclosure went really until i i just
listened to musical theater um but i was working in a bar when we made this record so whenever i hear her i remember doing a shift in the bar it came out on the charts you were playing it on radio one and i'm pulling pints and my best friends running into the bar with balloons because it was going up and up in the charts and i'm having to work a shift while listening to latch when did you quit your job i quit my job uh five six weeks after
best of all we performed at best of all for the first time well it happened i couldn't afford to just quit so i had to slowly it was when i got the my record deal basically wow like you can you can quit when you're recording that vocal because it's such a great example of your range at the very beginning of your career as far as most people are concerned i mean it's a blessing that you're able to show what you can do in a song like that
but at the time when you were recording you said you weren't necessarily convinced by it but what was it like being asked to kind of hit those notes and make that commitment so early on in a space you were comfortable in
we all wrote the song together and that melody was just it's weird when you're in a room writing your voice is so warmed up into that melody that you just you're there so the recording of it wasn't a problem it was more the singing it after
you know when you go and sing it in front of people and you're like jesus christ this song is insanely high do you have one performance that springs to mind during that promo that that tour around that song as you're leading up to release
you know in the lonely hour because it became very big disclosure became very big and so therefore you're singing in front of increasingly large audiences were there memories from that time it really started oh my god
i'm i can't explain how many memories we were playing these tiny tiny tiny clubs we played plan b in brixton which was an amazing night all these just all over all over the uk like nottingham my sister was at uni and nottingham who played
this tiny little club there it was just it was so exciting at that time i want to talk about stay with me with you because it was such a swerve from what people knew you as with disclosure as a first impression but for you was
obviously the first step proper a chance for people to really see what you wanted to be at that moment in your life what are your memories of making that song i'd be writing so much quit my job i was living in this awful little flat in oval uh i got burgled like three times as a nightmare and um we wrote this song and i just joke it was a weird moment i kind of it we wrote the song me tourist and jimmy and um we did it was i would thought it felt
quite boring and then i was like in the chorus we need to just layer loads of vocals so i was running around the studio just layering vocals and that the sound in the chorus is all my voice when you can't afford a chorus
that's how it's done yeah yeah yeah exactly when i listen back i i just burst into tears in the corner of the studio by myself because i was just like this is mad this is mad something about that song just from the minute we did it it was like
it felt like a magical thing a magical moment everyone i played it to my mum and dad hated it did they ever say why no they didn't i mean they love it now because it's got them a house yeah if i listen that's why i don't
listen to their advice now when i play the music an essential breakout moment for you i think was dancing with a stranger you and normani made you know the chemistry is so it is so in full evidence there and also it came out at a perfect time
when i felt like you were breaking free and this song reflected that yeah i think this was the the song that promises made me feel released and then dance of a stranger was like right i'm here now and i can just feel free i remember sitting here with you yeah i just come back from new zealand yeah had us die you did have a style yeah yeah you did i love i love um i love that song it's a really beautiful song and um yeah doing with her was was
a joy because she's incredible why what was your experience of recording with normani um she's just she was just so willing to do it and it was it was this serendipitous moment where we wrote the song and then she was coming in the studio that day to have a meeting with someone in the studio and i was just like babe do you like this she want to jump on it and she did straight away done but in one day um you know the theme of the song is
is a different take on something you've covered before which is the idea of wanting to find solace and comfort in the arms of someone who isn't you yes yes you're a dick yeah yeah so i'm gonna go find someone at least
for a short period of time that makes me forget about you why do you why do you think you see you keep sort of finding new ways to tell the story because there's new ways of feeling it you know the the ways that i felt on my first record i'd never been in a
relationship my first record was about a straight man i fell in love with who was married and i we weren't together so it was completely unrequited then during second album i got into a relationship my first one
and then that's what dancing stranger was about [Music] the thrill of it all is the name of your second album proper um and you know we've spoken in the past about the challenges you faced trying to follow up the success of the lonely hour
to good goodbyes was a great step forward what what is that song to you and and sort of what hit space were you in when you started to write it in relation to the previous out i think the thrill of all as an album actually was probably
part in part within the lonely hour i think it's it's all part of the same experience um the thrill of all was a was a reaction to fame and um two good goodbyes for me is that it's it has got that it's like part two
of um it was it wasn't unrequited it was more like i'm cold like i'm cold from everything that's happened i'm cold from my life and i'm good at this like i'm i almost wanted heartbreak because i was more comfortable being heartbroken than i was being happy i think there are times when artists when they're not feeling themselves entirely go into sort of almost an autopilot oh completely it's safe i felt safe the album was safe but i don't
i don't see i'm not ashamed of that because at a moment of such unsafety in my life all i wanted to feel was safe so that's honest to me it's you know pushing myself during that second album would have been probably detrimental to my health because i wasn't in the right space it ended up i think toward the end of that tour being a little detrimental to your health i think you found yourself in a pretty bad space yeah well for the first time i
um i mean i've always been sad but for the first time i actually like really had mental health issues like panic attacks anxiety like depression it really hit me hard that was it was i think it was a um a ptsd probably from
from before again with the relationship ending it didn't help but it was really it was tough time really tough coming off tour you know you don't have the adoration of thousands of people when you don't have even somebody next to you right beside
you can help you through that right i mean that's that's the definition of lonely yeah oh complete the adrenaline in high that you hit when you're on stage and the when you come off the the silence in a changing room
is really really tough that takes and it it's taking me six seven years to actually work out what i need to make that okay i'm nervous about the next tour too but i think the energy will be different on the next tour so you just need to
walk into a rave yeah instead of like i mean the last time i like came up on a chair like just crying do you know what i mean which was great but it's just it's heavy every night it's heavy it's heavy where were you when you got the phone call and you were asked to work on the bond theme we got asked to like pitch it was it wasn't like you're the one it was like as we all know because radio had released their version yeah very kindly yeah
um we got asked to pitch i think a few people did we all pitched and um yeah we we won did you which was amazing did you and jimmy when you set down to write it together what was the mood in the room at the beginning because that's like
a whole different brief and you're giving carte blanche to be as dramatic and big as you could possibly be do you know it came really it did come really easy i got we we read the script and we got in the room and we just went for it we actually
didn't like organize a time to do it we i think we were vocaling we were vocally a cover for something or other in rack in london and then we were like should we just give it a go now and we just went in the other room and just
gave it a go and it and it came it came and i loved that song but it was a tough time with that song because i mean the the oscar performance was a nightmare because i got given the wrong pack so i couldn't hear myself i messed up my
speech at the oscars um obviously the radiohead drama wasn't great like it was just it was just the whole song felt like wrapped in this you're out of confidence here's your oscar for the one of the worst periods of your life yeah it was just weird it was weird you know a few songs that i don't know if you still sort of how you feel about them uh um i mean la la la are we gonna play this shows a lot of promise oh gosh lay me down um
you know i actually i want to play the version of lamy down their head john legend on it i want to know what it's like for you when you have a song that exists in its entirety in its original form that's loved by so many
and then you open it up for other people to contribute and how that feels i mean john lennon is an amazing human being no one's denying that but you know how that experience is when it already exists he blessed that song he's my version with him for me is my
favorite version of that song however i actually don't know if we ever captured a version of that song correctly um i'm recording it's this weird song that exists so beautifully live and um every time there's moments i do it live and it's like boom that's it capturing it recording it we tried five six times different versions and there's just we couldn't capture it i don't know why so how did you settle on one you were happy to let go of i
mean to be honest i didn't i just i've got to admit maybe i'm the worst um artist for saying this yeah but i find it really really hard to finish records because i feel like we i write these records and i love them so much and i just i just find the mixing stuff really difficult like i get bored distribution is not your forte yeah it's just like listen to it again and again and again and you lose track of what's going on and then it's
hard it's i'm a singer i'm a singer yeah at the end of the day and that's how i write i sing and i and i sing words i don't i'm not a producer you know you've worked with some fantastic people you worked with calvin harris on a song that you know
we've talked about already in essentials the the feeling of promises and how it kind of set you free and i wonder what it's like going in and working with other people without the pressure of it being on your back
and actually being able to go in and and contribute to somebody else's vision as well as your own i love collaborating i love walking into a room and singing whatever and trying to sound like that or trying to sound like that so what's it like collaborating with calvin oh he's incredible he did everything himself which i was you know you know this like a lot of people don't do things yeah yeah it's true they don't do anything sometimes
and um calvin did everything by himself and it was me him and jesse reyes and it was just a beautiful day really beautiful and i was i was at this weird place where i was nearly single and we just had a shot of whiskey and like had fun
it was great yeah great um when you perform that song live as well i feel like it's opened the door for you to everything feels different after promises yeah it's it's weird it was we started performing it live and the first few times i was
moving and then by the end of the tour i was catwalking up and down the stage voguing like i was going mental it it it just released me it because it's light it's just there's a way of being serious and there's a way of being sad
without and and being able to dance at the same time exactly you know you know you can have emotion on the dance floor that's yeah that's the the best kind yeah and no one you know like it gets to the point where even the
fans i think start to say like we don't want another really sad somber sam moment for your benefit yeah yeah it's actually because it becomes vicarious to the point of like this is not healthy for me yeah because it's you're right it's it's it's it's exhausting actually to do it and i've got my whole life to do that when i'm older and can't actually move do you know me make the most of it yeah exactly dance where you can you