The alpha male pop star is dead for the moment; Sam Smith — the most recent major male pop star to emerge in the Anglophone world — seems to be the perfect caulk to fill in the gap left by last year’s Robin Thickes and Justin Timberlakes. He’s a shy, emotional dude with a lot of pain in his heart and a preference for commitment over casual sex. The cover of his debut album, In The Lonely Hour, says everything you need to know about him in a single image — enough so that it’s not necessary to actually listen to the record to get what he’s all about.
On most of these songs, he’s obsessing over someone else, but there’s little depth to his feelings. Adele, the pop star he is most often compared to, filled her vocal performances with complex, often conflicting emotions; look at Someone Like You, on which she wishes her ex-lover well in a voice so full of venom it could sour milk. Smith, on the other hand, always maintains a steady tone, keeping his voice at an affected sob. He talks about “demons,” exclaims “Lord” every now and again, and always goes out of his way to add pained little croaks to his words. This is “soul” as a preset, befitting his former career as a hired-gun vocalist for dance producers like Disclosure and Naughty Boy.
It’s thus fitting that the variations in quality between the tracks on In The Lonely Hour have largely to do with the production. The piano is the dominant instrument here, but it’s mostly playing basic triads and uninteresting chord progressions; only on the almost Beatlesque I’m Not The Only One and the closing Lay Me Down does it do anything interesting. (It’s no coincidence those two songs are the best on the record.) The other two best songs here, Stay With Me and Good Thing, are both aided by cute little production flourishes — a gospel choir on the former and a sumptuous string section on the latter — and would flounder without them.
The bland production on this album may have been a concession to Smith’s voice, but given that Smith is largely doing the same thing on every track, it didn’t exactly work. As In The Lonely Hour clearly shows, Smith is just as dependent on his producers as the protagonist of his songs is on a lover.