The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.
By PATRICK DOYLE
For his current Rolling Stone cover story, Sam Smith gave hours of interviews, both on his home turf in London and in Atlanta as he prepared to launch his first arena tour, giving us so much material that we couldn’t possibly print it all. Smith, 22, who is nominated for six Grammys this weekend, opened up about everything from his cross earrings to listening to Lana Del Rey in the bath. Here are 22 highlights:
1. He wasn’t afraid to speak up for equality at his Catholic school.
“From what I can remember, they believe that you can be homosexual, but you just can’t practice it, which is ridiculous,” he says. “I would just say, ‘I am proof that it’s genetic. It has to be, because it wasn’t a choice.’ And that’s it. That’s my only argument, you know? You love who you love, and I can’t help that I like guys.”
2. He’s not sure he ever wants to get married.
“My views on marriage actually don’t come from what’s going on in the gay community. They actually come from my mom and dad splitting up,” Smith admits. “I’m a bit unsure as to whether I want to [get married]. I don’t understand why you have to wear a wedding ring to warn people off. You should be able to be faithful to that person without anything on your body to show that you are with someone. You know what I mean? [But] I’m a 22-year-old boy, I have no idea what I want yet. In terms of marriage, I change my mind every week. I’ve changed my mind every week on what my type is. I change it all the time. But it depends on the person I’ve met. If I fall in love with someone who really wants to get married, then I think I’d do that for them.”
–
18. The Catholic Church influenced his style.
“I went to Catholic school ’til I was 18. There’s a connection there, you know?” he says. “For a lot of things I do, it’s a symbol. . .I used to change my earrings up all the time, every day. I’d have different pairs for each day. The day that I shot the acoustic video to ‘Lay Me Down,’ it just so happened that I wore cross earrings. And I remember when I watched the video back, I was like, ‘That can be my thing.’ There’s a little meaning behind wearing crucifixes in my ears, you know? But I would never go into it.”
19. He wants his overall style to be “iconic.”
“That’s all I want. I want what I wear to be iconic. Not even what I wear, the way I hold myself. I don’t know, I like clean-cut things that are just iconic. I like wearing things that I would look at pictures of in 60 years’ time and they’ll still be in fashion, do you know what I mean? That’s what I like.”
20. Don’t expect him to play Russia.
“I don’t hate Russia, but I just will never go to Russia [because] what they do to gay people there is just disgusting and it makes me very angry,” Smith says. “I’ve even said, no matter how many billions of pounds you could offer me, I just couldn’t, which makes me sad because I have Russian fans. They contact me on Twitter, it makes me sad.”
21. He wants his next album to be more personal than his first.
“I’m very passionate about being relatable. On my second record, instead of looking like I have more money, more airbrushing, I want to actually be more raw and more honest on my second album than my first,” he says. “I want to be a pop star that isn’t really skinny, a pop star who doesn’t have a perfectly even face, where in my music video, I don’t look my best, [but] I look raw and human. I want to change what a pop star is. I think that’s deep down what I really want to do in music. I want to change that whole idea of, ‘When I’m older, I want to be perfect.’ I want to change people’s idea of what perfection is. That’s what I really want.”
22. He’s excited about a new song called “Scars,” a letter to his parents.
“After ‘In the Lonely Hour,’ I was thinking, ‘How do I become relatable when I’m not relatable?’ [Most] people don’t go to [fancy] restaurants, can’t treat their families and take their sisters out. People don’t have that. And how could I write an album that people can relate to when people can’t relate to [me], you know what I mean?” Smith says. “It’s really scary, and I had that moment where I was like, ‘I could lose everything on my second album, because I’m no longer relatable.’ And also [I had] that pressure of, ‘OK, shit, now I need to fall in love. Something like that needs to happen for me to become relatable again.’ Then I wrote that song [“Scars”] and every kid who has come from a divorced family is going to listen to that. And I feel weird, because I shouldn’t give too much away. My album, it’s going to be another year and a bit.”
