AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Do you ever hear the advice to just stay out of the comment section? I mean, I certainly have. And even someone like this...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY GUY")
SAM SMITH: (Singing) He's all that I need, my morning star.
CHANG: ...This talented with an Oscar, multiple Grammys and Brit Awards - even they need to take that advice.
SMITH: Every album really up to this one, I've definitely read some reviews that I shouldn't have at times. With this album, I've decided to go completely silent and just lean into the expression of putting art into the world.
CHANG: This is musician Sam Smith, whose latest album, "Hazel Eyes," is out now. The whole album is a departure from their past work in the sense that this time around, the music is hopeful.
SMITH: I love commercial pop music, and I would always want to make that. But after the release of my last album, "Gloria," and with my song "Unholy," which was - felt like I climbed a mountain to get to that song, it was time for me to surround myself with beauty and safety and to try and challenge myself and deepen myself as a songwriter.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY GUY")
SMITH: (Singing) He's my guy.
CHANG: Smith talked to me earlier this week from Mexico City as they continued an international tour, and they told me how falling in love with their fiance, fashion designer Christian Cowan, had inspired the title track of the album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HAZEL EYES")
SMITH: (Singing) Hazel eyes like autumn leaves.
CHANG: Tell me why you call this record "Hazel Eyes." Whose eyes are hazel, Sam?
SMITH: Well, they're my partner's eyes.
CHANG: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
SMITH: And I actually, after writing this song - it's quite hilarious. After writing the song and the album, he then turns to me a month ago and says, you do know I don't have hazel eyes, and I'm like, what?
CHANG: What? Wait, what color are his eyes?
SMITH: Well, I thought that hazel eyes were the color of hazelnut.
CHANG: (Laughter).
SMITH: I thought they were...
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: Like brown or light brown, with flecks of golds.
SMITH: Like, they're beautiful hazel brown - hazelnut brown eyes. They're his eyes.
CHANG: Oh, how funny.
SMITH: I know, it's - I know (ph) So I've changed the definition of hazel eyes with this album.
CHANG: Well, maybe you should rename the album "Hazelnut Eyes."
SMITH: I - maybe I should.
CHANG: (Laughter).
SMITH: Maybe I should.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HAZEL EYES")
SMITH: (Singing) Found a place where I can fall apart inside your hazel eyes.
Yeah, it's about his eyes, and that song, for me, was the first ever pure love song I've ever written, where I'm just describing in beautiful poetry and detail the man that I love.
CHANG: Well, I want to talk more about how your views and your thoughts and feelings about love have evolved because I heard that you started writing the song "Everlasting Love" the night before your first date with Christian, who's now your fiance. And then you finished that song while you two were a couple, is that right?
SMITH: Yeah, I - the beginning of it was written probably - it was actually written a couple of months before I met Christian. And the song began as an ode to gay, single nightlife and being a romantic. Me and Simon, who wrote...
CHANG: Simon...
SMITH: Simon Aldred, who's a beautiful, dear friend of mine. And that song was really about capsulating (ph) the kind of - I guess, the sadness sometimes I would feel, you know, when I had - would have a one-night stand.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERLASTING LOVE")
SMITH: (Singing) You can't live inside your busy mind forever, hoping love will find you.
SMITH: I'd always secretly be hoping that it would turn into something a little bit more...
CHANG: I relate.
SMITH: ...More long-term.
(LAUGHTER)
SMITH: And so three years later, we wrote the second half, which is about basically waking up the next morning and looking into these hazel eyes, these hazelnut eyes...
CHANG: (Laughter).
SMITH: ...And realizing that this actually could be an everlasting love.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERLASTING LOVE")
SMITH: (Singing) When morning breaks, my heart awakes.
CHANG: Did being in a happy, healthy relationship change your creative process? I ask this because, you know, when you listen back on so much of your music, Sam, especially in those early years, so many of your songs - they center on loneliness or unrequited love. The New York Times called you - what? - a heartbreak specialist, I think it was. Did writing the music for this album come from a different place for you, musically speaking?
SMITH: Yes. Oh, for sure. I mean, musically, I challenged myself so deeply. I was just trying to push myself, and a lot of the songs that you hear on the album are those late-night moments where you're all balancing, trying to get the perfect take.
CHANG: Oh.
SMITH: And it only happens once, you know?
CHANG: Yeah.
SMITH: So the album is very, very human. And I think that that's the same with the content and the contents of love. And I've actually found that through being in love, I actually am more in tune with my sadness and my melancholy than ever before. And it's just, I have someone to hold me in it as well as me holding myself in it now.
CHANG: You know, I'm asking these questions about how your creative process has evolved because I was just listening back to something that you said on NPR. This is all the way back in 2014, so - what is that?
SMITH: My goodness.
CHANG: Twelve years ago.
SMITH: A baby.
CHANG: Yeah (laughter). This - I would love for you to take a listen to this. This is something that you said when you were talking to my former colleague, Melissa Block.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
MELISSA BLOCK: I mentioned that you're 22 years old. Do you think you're going to look back on these songs written when you are young and these songs of, you know, loneliness and longing and think, God, I was so young, I know so much more now?
SMITH: Yes, I am. I think I'm going to look back and think, oh, my God, shut up about being so lonely.
BLOCK: (Laughter).
SMITH: But do you know what? I can only imagine how beautiful it's going to be when I've fallen in love and I can look back on this and think, you know, it wasn't that bad.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LEAVE YOUR LOVER")
SMITH: (Singing) I don't have much to give, but...
CHANG: Sam, what does it feel like to hear...
SMITH: Oh, my God.
CHANG: Your younger self?
SMITH: It makes me want to cry (laughter).
CHANG: Tell me what's going through...
SMITH: That makes me tearful.
CHANG: ...Your mind. Yeah? Tell me why.
SMITH: It just makes me tearful hearing that. It just - I mean, everyone always told me when I was younger that I was an old soul, and I listen to that, and I'm just like, I get it now.
CHANG: If you could have a conversation with yourself, what would you say to Sam in 2014 about what it is like to finally find love, to be at peace with love because you found it?
SMITH: I would say that - and I apologize if this sounds cliche. But there is no love with someone else that will be as good as the love that you create with yourself. And I believe that I was able to attract my love with Christian and my partner because I got to such a beautiful place beforehand. It's a balance of giving yourself what you need and then allow that person to love you in that way. I read a quote once that says that if you like a flower, you pick it. But if you love a flower, you water it. And I think that's something that stayed with me forever when it comes to the definition of love.
CHANG: I love that.
SMITH: The album actually ends on a song called "Hold On."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLD ON")
SMITH: (Singing) Love is coming to save the day.
And the song is a message to my younger self and to younger queer people. And it's really saying, you know, hold on because there is love to be had, and I will be there to help you find that.
CHANG: Sam Smith - their new album is called "Hazel Eyes." This was such a beautiful conversation, Sam. Thank you so much for sharing this time with me.
SMITH: Oh, thank you so much. It's lovely to talk to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLD ON")
SMITH: (Singing) I'll be waiting on the, the other side. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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