When you’ve got one dedicated weekend between a Friday release and a Monday album review, you 100% know what your ears are going to be relishing over the break.
Thank God the album under assessment was Sam Smith’s.
I had to tackle the full 17-song ‘Love Goes’ cohesiveness, inspiring and light masterpiece rather smartly. My errand-running, family-visiting, brunch-devouring, house-packing, Halloween-party-attending busy body just didn’t have the time to binge the album all in one sitting.
Thus, ‘Love Goes’ became my in-car escape. Every time I jumped into the old girl; I’d play a track.
Here’s a recap of the top 5 highlights of this fantastically tender artist manifesto:
5. “Dance (Til You Love Someone Else)”
After waiting patiently for this delayed album to finally release, it’s here and this track has it arriving in full force. I was on my way out to pick up a click-and-collect purchase for the Mardi Gras festival next weekend. The sun was peeking down the highway and this track began seeping out the speakers. The uplifting vibe of this song truly perked up my Friday evening attitude with house music as the alluring base. If anything, it demonstrates that Smith truly can make songs to cry to, dance to, or cry while dancing. This one in particular, is the latter. Perhaps the use of a positive house mix as the backing layer is indeed Sam’s way of attempting to rise out of their break-up slump. We haven’t heard a bouncy track like this from them ever before.
4. “Breaking Hearts”
The total sleeplessness and depression that inevitably comes after heartbreak has been packaged up and dressed in a bow for this one. Its intricacy and intimacy left me turning up the volume and wishing I knew the words so I could scream them out the window. ‘Breaking Hearts’ is just one of the songs that has Smith’s recent breakup with Brandon Flynn coursing through its veins – creating a string of cohesive broken hearts throughout the entire album.
“I’d say [this was] the first proper time I’ve been actually heartbroken. That feeling of they’re gone, you can’t sleep, the really, really bad feeling,” says Smith of the track.
3. “My Oasis” feat. Burna Boy
Burna Boy contrasts so seamlessly with Smith’s falsetto ballads in this tune. The moody song provided the breath of fresh air I needed after the rush of trying to drive from brunch to the family on time. After Sam publicly underwent a profound personal and creative metamorphosis, ‘My Oasis’ is certainly a testament to that, stepping away from the sad bread-and-butter they do so well, and bringing forth a punchier pop taste that settles well on the taste buds.
2. “Forgive Myself”
I’ve always adored Sam for being an introvert that stumbled across this world of fame, a sea of shining extroverts. There are some elements in this song that are unapologetically desperate, and Sam’s not afraid to address those feelings. Sam realises they can’t move forward with life until they forgive all that has happened in the past. It’s slow, steady and vulnerable, a gorgeous addition to the album.
“I feel super emotional about it because … the last two years have been a really, really mad time of experimentation, of finding myself with my gender expression, with so much that has happened the last two years. It’s captured in this music.”
1. “Young”
Not often is the opening song my number one pick of the album. The reason I chose this song is because of its impeccable timely relevance to the general school of thought circling my wider social circle at the moment. The desire for freedom, to do what we want, be what we want. We’ve been locked up with the pandemic for a while now, rules to follow and masks to wear, and we’re all craving those feelings of the wind in our hair and our worries behind us. Sam Smiths ‘Young’ acapella is a treat I think will digest fantastically as it makes waves on radio.
“Can’t you see that all I wanna do is/ Get a little wild, get a little high/ Kiss a hundred boys and not feel like I’m tied to them?”
Overall, the anticipated release of ‘Love Goes’ after a big delay AND name change, was definitely well worth the wait. It came at a time where we’re all searching for freedom – providing magnificent feels as I drove through the weekend.
A huge congratulations to Sam Smith for the amazing release. If you’re looking for an album that takes you to another place as well as sending you right inside your own heart at times, jump on in.
SEE ALSO: ‘I’m Not The Only One’: The Universal Truths Of A Sam Smith Classic
