And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week Releases

CMU Beef Of The Week #273: Sam Smith v The Truth

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 11 September 2015

Sam Smith, eh. Sam bloody Smith. Poll topper. Million seller. Record breaker. Award winner. Surgery survivor. Charity supporter. Live advertiser. Liar.

And what a liar. Such a big liar. Lying is probably Smith’s defining characteristic. If they gave out prizes for lying, he’d probably win as many for that as he has for his music. I mean, really, how can we trust anything he says? How can we really be sure that he had no idea that ‘Stay With Me’ sounded very slightly like ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty? Just because he says he didn’t, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Because, let’s face it, he was given ample opportunity to admit that he had recorded the theme song for new James Bond film ‘Spectre’, and yet he chose to lie about it. And he pulled Ellie Goulding into that lie too, which is probably the worst thing about this whole sorry affair. Don’t draw poor, innocent Ellie into your sordid pit of untruths, Sam Smith. If that is your real name.

It turns out that Smith’s Bond theme has actually been in the can since January, and he first met with director Sam Mendes and Bond overseer Barbara Broccoli over a year ago to discuss it. A bloody year! Which would mean that this Sun article from last August was actually correct. Even though, just days later, Smith told the NME that he had “no idea” what the tabloid was going on about. He even said he hadn’t read the article, which I bet wasn’t true either.

Speaking to BBC News this week, Smith revelled in his deception, saying: “I’m actually really proud of how good I am at lying. There was one interview I did where I saved the clip and was like, ‘Everyone, look how amazing I am at acting’. I had to just deny, deny, deny, that’s what I wanted to do”.

“The only thing [I felt guilty about] was [that] people put words in my mouth and said that I said that Ellie Goulding was doing it, which I never did”, he added. “So I just hope people know that. But other than that, yeah, I’m a liar. I’m a filthy liar”.

Such a filthy liar, in fact, that he still can’t stop himself even now that it’s all come out. Because he did say that Ellie Goulding was doing it. Or at least he suggested she was, in order to throw people off the scent. Look, here in this interview with Capital FM back in July you can see the words “I heard Ellie Goulding was doing it” come right out of his dirty, lying mouth. And then here again on Absolute Radio. Asked who he thinks should record the Bond song, what is the first name to come out of his mouth? Yes, Ellie fucking Goulding.

He also says in that BBC interview that he wasn’t 100% happy with his lying, because he told the truth to a handful of people. “It was really difficult [keeping it a secret]. I told my family – my mum and dad and my sisters, and I did tell my best friend. But that was kind of it. Even now though, I regret telling anyone. I should have told no one and just released it”.

Brazen! Is this an indication of what he’ll do next time he has a project he’s contractually bound to keep quiet about? I hope not, but I fear that it is. The lies, the dishonesty, the downright trickery, I just can’t believe it. The depths this man will go to.

And lengths, I should add, are not something he went to in actually writing the song. In his BBC interview he explained: “It was actually the easiest thing I’ve done, in terms of music. I was in RAK Studios in London, and I was actually recording a vocal to ‘Lay Me Down’. Jimmy Napes, who I wrote the song with, just played this chord, and I was like, ‘Stop the recording, we have to go and attempt this’. And we went into the studio next door and we literally wrote the song in like 20 minutes. And then I recorded the demo, and the vocal that’s on the actual song is the demo. It was the quickest thing I’ve ever done in my life”.

Although how can we know that is even true? Maybe he spent months on it. Months and months. Maybe he’s just trying to present himself as someone from whom music pours out of. When, in fact, an enemy of the truth such as Sam Smith struggles to pull any real emotion from his soul. How can we even know he wrote this song? How, readers, can we even know that he recorded it? Maybe there is no song. Maybe there is no film. Maybe ‘Spectre’ is an invention of Sam Smith’s sick mind. Has even the character of James Bond been something he has just convinced us we all grew up with, when in fact the very notion of Bond doesn’t actually exist? It is impossible at this stage to say.

The only thing I absolutely know to be true is that Sam Smith is a liar. And that makes me sick to my very core.