Sam Smith- Gloria
Label: Capitol
Producers: Sam Smith, Jimmy Napes, StarGate, Ilya, Cirkut, Blake Slatkin, Calvin Harris, Omer Fedi, Anju Blaxx, David Odlum, Steve Mac, Loshendrix, Nesbitt Wesonga
The fourth studio album from pop crooner Sam Smith very much starts out like that of a bait-and-switch. It launches with the kind of neo-soul power ballad that made their golden pipes a household presence, “Love Me More”, a stirring announcement of self-love and triumph over one’s inner-most demons and doubts. By the time the album concludes, the listener has experienced an aggressive artistic transformation on the part of Smith, who utilizes Gloria to ascend to the greatest heights of dance-pop dramatics. It’s as if the long-awaited confidence and self-affirmation celebrated on the opening cut finally gives the artist the kind of liberation and fearless creativity necessary to fully reinvent themselves into the kind of pop scientist they’d been dreaming of becoming. Along the way, Smith’s songs, “No God”, “Lose You”, and “Perfect’ among them, serve as both personal excavations and bold statements against the kind of hypocrisy, prejudice, and hate that has stymied both their own relationships and self-development, as well as those of all marginalized citizens, with members of the LGBTQ+ community chief among them. This evolution of course reaches an intense fever pitch when the smash Kim Petras duet, “Unholy”, a deliciously dastardly and danceable portrayal of a devout husband sneaking out on his wife to indulge in the pleasures of a homosexual encounter. While Smith doesn’t completely abandon the heart-tugging, bread-white balladry at this point (the album after all does still close with an Ed Sheeran duet), “Unholy” is one of those tracks that forever changes how you listen and experience the music of an artist from that point forward, with additional bangers “Gimme” and “I’m Not Here To Make Friends” cementing the fact that Smith has forever opened a transformative door that they don’t intend to shut ever again. Truthfully though, the most dramatic and deceptively pointed late-album statement on this record proves to be the brief, hymnal-based title track, a sure-fire protest against religious hypocrisy that says the most by saying very little at all. Overall, Gloria proves to be a bewildering and schizophrenic musical ride, which may tempt one to label it as uneven or misguided. However, that would be to suggest that such a fascinating lack of definition and adventurous diversity was unintentional on Smith’s part, rather than the clearly deliberate and complex metaphor that this overall album is meant to be. With this album, Sam Smith may have very well just emerged as one of the most topically convicted and entertainingly unpredictable pop curators of the next decade.
Track Listing:
- “Love Me More” (Sam Smith, James Napier, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen)
- “No God” (Smith, Napier, Eriksen, Hermansen)
- “Hurting Interlude”
- “Lose You” (Smith, Napier, Ilya, Salmanzadeh, Henry Walter, Blake Slatkin, Omer Fedi)
- “Perfect” with Jessie Reyez (Smith, Jessie Reyez, Napier, Eriksen, Hermansen)
- “Unholy” featuring Kim Petras (Smith, Napier, Salmanzadeh, Walter, Slatkin, Fedi, Kim Petras)
- “How to Cry” (Smith, Napier, Salmanzadeh, Walter, Slatkin, Fedi)
- “Six Shots” (Smith, Napier, Loshenddrix, Nesbitt Wesonga, Ray Keys, Nami)
- “Gimme” with Koffee and Jessie Reyez (Smith, Reyez, Napier, Eriksen, Hermansen)
- “Dorothy’s Interlude”
- “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” (Smith, Reyez, Napier, Eriksen, Hermansen)
- “Gloria” (Smith, Foy Vance)
- “Who We Love” featuring Ed Sheeran (Smith, Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac, Napier, Johnny McDaid, Fred Gibson)
The 706 
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