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New sam smith album quote10/4/2023 How do you follow that? With a gentle acoustic ballad called “How to Cry,” of course. It’s the most sexually loaded song to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” but it’s one of the most musically innovative and unusual songs in years to do the same. A throbbing pop-dance track about a family man’s adventures in unsafe sex, it has a skulking rhythm and raucous, roaring chorus that sounds like a cross between an Arabic melody and a sea chanty. The easy groove of those three songs comes to a lurching halt when “Unholy” - Smith’s swaggering smash duet with Kim Petras released last fall - throws open the door and thunders in. But from there the album shifts into gear with three R&B-tinged songs that swing between the low-key disco of “Lose You” to the sultry “Perfect,” a duet with Canadian-Colombian singer Jessie Reyez that sums up one of the album’s themes: “I’m not perfect, but I’m worth it/ I’m not perfect, but I’m working on it.” The album opens deceptively with “Love Me More,” a gospel-inflected self-care song that places its empowering but sometimes dark lyrics - “Every day I’m trying not to hate myself” - over a sincere, sing-song melody that seems more suited to a John Legend or Jon Batiste (or, honestly, a TV commercial). The heartache is still there, but with less insecurity and more I-will-survive, like the songs are coming from a person more comfortable in their own skin. There’s plenty of the powerhouse soaring that fans crave, but it’s used strategically and sparingly, with the focus more on suiting the mood and the lyric than shattering glass. Blige, but more the mid-period work of George Michael, Sade and especially Prince, whose influence looms large in several songs here. But along with all that, Smith has become a much more assured singer, their vocals and phrasing taking on a nuance that evokes classic R&B singers from Gladys Knight and Anita Baker to Mary J.
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