I’ve gone back and forth about covering Sam Smith’s interviews over the past three months or so. I really like him but… I don’t know, maybe I thought people wouldn’t be interested? Sam has gotten so much attention lately, for all the right reasons. He’s very talented, he has a beautiful voice and he lives a pretty normal life. You can tell he still gets star-struck and this whole celebrity thing is still pretty new to him. I also like and appreciate the fact that he was out as a gay man before he even made it, and he didn’t dive back into the closet as soon as fame came to him. I’ve read some stuff (mostly on Gawker) saying that Sam’s take-me-as-I-am/uncontroversial homosexuality is more conservative than it should be, mostly because Sam isn’t specifically singing/talking about being gay. Sam has said in the past that he strives to make his songs gender neutral, because he wants a broad audience to relate to his songs. Makes sense to me?

Anyway, Sam has a new interview with Teen Vogue that I enjoyed – you can read the full piece here. I think he manages to find an appropriate way of speaking to his teenage fans without being patronizing. He’s only 22 years old, you know. Some highlights:

Being himself: “Being yourself can be quite scary… Music is everything because it’s my way of expressing myself. I’m a highly emotional boy, but there are other things that I love. Like food. I love food more than life.”

Finding his voice: “The minute I started to tell a story, everything clicked into place. I became an artist because I had something to say and that’s why to me, even when people mention my voice on the record, I get quite shocked because when it comes to the singing, I can sing a lot more than what I did on the record. I held it back because I wanted the focus to be on the music and the songs and what I was saying.”

Wanting to be a professional singer: “I wanted this so badly that I was willing to completely sell myself to become a pop star because I was poor. No one was complimenting me anymore, so I started to lose my faith. I thought, I’m going to have to dress a certain way, lose weight, or sing a certain type of song. But the truth is, I was OK just as I was.”

He’s emotional: “I stand onstage and I wanna cry for the entire thing because people know my business. You all know me. You can read as many interviews as you want, but if you put on my record, I’m telling you, that is me. I fell in love with someone last year, and he didn’t love me back. I deleted him off of WhatsApp, and it felt like I’d just broken up with him. On the record you can hear heartbreak, and there’s a beauty in that I will always treasure.”

He loves Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Stevie Wonder, & Anna Wintour: “As a kid I collected Vogue every month for three years. My cross earrings are a mini statement; I wear them every day! My whole dream is to be iconic, and the way you dress yourself is so important.”

His life goals: “The idea of having a house, a kid, a husband, and a dog…I love that. I also really want to open a coffee and flower shop one day, probably in Italy.”

Being gay: “With the whole gay thing, I’ve had zero reaction, which says something beautiful about our generation and how things are getting a little bit better.”

[From Teen Vogue]

See? I don’t get why there’s this contrarian backlash against him at all. So he’s not a “political” gay man. Why does it matter? He loves to sing and write music and he’s not saying anything hurtful or intolerant. He just wants to sing. He actually reminds me of Adele. Beautiful-voiced British sweethearts wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Oh, and “I’m Not the Only One” is MY JAM.

Photos courtesy of Teen Vogue, WENN.