Ask anyone who knows me, and you will be told of my immense love for Sam Smith and the poetry within his lyrics. To me, they are like books full of experience and lessons, imparted through beautiful piano melodies and gospel choir backing vocals. When he speaks of love and pain there is a certain magic to his lyrics that allows even those who have not felt the same to be entranced in his journey. The album is about the beauty of broken love and the pain associated with it. Every song is beautiful in its own way. Below are five of my favorites:
The first song on the album, Too Good At Goodbyes, is about someone who has too often been hurt by relationships in the past and his resulting built up resistance to love in the future. “I’m never gonna get too close to you, even though I mean the most to you,” he sings, “in case you go and leave me in the dirt.”
Too Good At Goodbyes is followed by Say It First, almost a quilt of both hope and pain, this song revolves around a lover's hope for confirmation of requited love by urging the other to utter the words I love you. There is both distrust and reassurance one could sense in the song when he sings "Say it first, I need to hear you say those words if I'm all that you desire, I promise there'll be fire".
One Last song revolves around the lover that his last album was dedicated to and serves as an ode to the pain of old love. It is the final song to his past lover and the torment that their love has caused. Sam Smith sings "but right here right now, you are on my mind, and I think about you all the time".
Pray is an anthem to humanity. In this song, Sam Smith claims his flaws and mistakes. He discusses his upbringing in a Christian home contrasted with the lack of religiousness in his life. There is almost a sense of guilt in the fact that he is only religious when he feels despair and hopelessness.
My ultimate favorite song, however, is HIM. HIM is a powerful ballad about his sexual identity. It starts by tracing back to Sam Smith's roots in Catholicism by addressing God and asking Him to have faith in him. When he sings "say I shouldn't be here but I can't give up his touch", the word "here" is referring to the church and their lack of acceptance toward the LGBTQPIA+ community. He goes on to discuss the judgment he feels for being who he is in public by complete strangers, and the lack of understanding on the part of others.
