Overwrought, overthought – every lyric dripping with boyband fist-pump and wincing agony, every line delivered with falsetto and vibrato. Pop is, or has the propensity to be, by its very nature, bloated with emotion. It’s ham-fisted, inflated and pantomimic on occasion – but make no mistake, that’s his charm. Smith’s album is anti-raw it’s hi-fi, polished like a mafia don’s wingtip.

As with Hurts, Smith’s power comes from the richness and overblown nature of the sound. Where it becomes mindblowing will be a point of contention. Sam Smith wears it well – he bellows with conviction, warbles like a modern-day Anastacia, and often slinks into slick dance territories. It’s a well-worn genre of late, with many hands dabbling in the chic, retro croon and ’90s heydays, and it works for most. The hype vortex has swallowed Smith, torn him asunder and rended his heart in twain can he rise forth and prove that he’ll not succumb to expectations? Is his much-awaiting, eagerly-anticipated debut LP able to stand up against his supernova stardom? In The Lonely Hour arrives with so much baggage, in every sense bar the literal one.įirst off, the neo-R&B, soulful pop is grand. Cosmic expansion, more like.īut, as the late, great Uncle Ben (from Spiderman) once said: “with great power comes great responsibility”. But going from zero to hero is no biggie, not for Sam Smith. Dominating the music press since his inaugural chart jaunts with Disclosure and Naughty Boy and subsequently winning coveted gongs – the BBC Sound Of 2014 and the Critics’ Choice at the BRITs – he’s become the UK’s commercial breakthrough artist du jour, and has festival stints lined up nationwide that last year would’ve been no more than sordid fantasy. Touted as the “male Adele” – an interesting flip of gender comparisons, there – Cambridgeshire’s man of the hour Sam Smith couldn’t be in a better position to obliterate this summer.

In the lonely hour album tracklist