Less ballads, more upbeat pop tunes
Sam Smith has announced that a pop-driven follow-up to their 2017 album, ‘The Thrill Of It All’, will arrive next year.
In a new interview with the Zach Sang Show, Smith expressed excitement about their upcoming record, which will land sometime in 2020. The singer also confirmed that their newest offering will feature fewer ballads and plenty of poppier tracks in the vein of recent singles ‘How Do You Sleep?’ and ‘Dancing With A Stranger’, featuring Normani.
“I feel like I have recently shown a side of me which I normally keep to myself or for my family and friends,” Smith told Sang. “I showed everyone it and everyone loved it. It’s almost given me permission to kinda do what I’ve always dreamed of doing but I was always scared to do, which is pop music.”
They added that the new songs will feature full-blown pop production, moving away from their previous “acoustic-y, soulful version of pop music”. “It’s made me feel really good and happy,” Smith said.
The singer also revealed that they were spurred to write new music following a 2018 collaboration with Calvin Harris, ‘Promises’. “I just naturally started getting back into the studio and started to write,” Smith said. “I caught this wind and started riding this wave and I haven’t stopped writing since.”
Check out the full interview below:
Smith’s last album ‘The Thrill Of It All’ received a four-star review from NME’s Nick Levine who wrote that the “majestic” record was an “an undeniably accomplished album that will, deservedly, shift a helluva lot of copies”.
Smith recently teamed up with Renée Zellweger for a duet of Judy Garland’s ‘Get Happy’ for the cinema icon’s new biopic Judy.
