in the lonely hour deluxe edition v. drowning

Maybe we shouldn’t expect sincerity from our pop acts and I’m approaching this from completely the wrong angle if I’m to get anything from it. Neither of these things are necessarily Sam Smith’s fault, but that doesn’t stop it from rendering the song to be basically null. Similarly, these special edition releases are about as much a cash cow as you can possibly conceive. You can’t feasibly claim to not have money on your mind when you’ve been fast-tracked to success by the wealth of those around you. Still, hearing a track like 'Money on my Mind' will still bug me more than it has any right to. As a pop performer, that’s probably not the damning verdict that it might be for a guitar band with eyes on headlining festivals. Smith is an artist who is more tolerable on record than he is in the live arena. Listening to a Sam Smith record in full, which I did for the first time for the purposes of this review, eliminates some of what I found so worthy of scorn from the equation. My problem was primarily with what I deemed to be false sincerity and emotion. Over the summer, I provoked the ire of some with a scathing review of Smith’s festival shows at both Nos Alive and V Festival. Now, with this Drowning Shadows version of that record, he’s getting the re-release treatment.

There’s a track on this new repackaging that’s live from Madison Square Garden, which is just a taste of what he and those around him have achieved. His debut album, In The Lonely Hour, rocketed him into the position of a genuine global superstar.

You can’t deny the ridiculous success of Sam Smith.

In the lonely hour deluxe edition v. drowning