Sam Smith finds peace in New York, love, and intimate songwriting on 'Hazel Eyes'

Sam Smith logs into a video call from Guadalajara, Mexico, with the username "Lily of the Valley"—their birth flower, a small gesture that sets the tone for what they want to discuss. They're in the middle of a six-city residency tour called To Be Free, supporting their fifth album, Hazel Eyes, a deliberate step away from the arena spectacle that defined their recent years. Gone are the gold props and seven costume changes. What Smith is after now is something simpler and harder to achieve: the ability to actually see the people in front of them.

It's a marked shift for an artist who broke through at twenty as the featured voice on Disclosure's 2012 hit Latch, then exploded with their 2014 debut In the Lonely Hour, which gave the world "Stay With Me" and established them as a soulful chart-topper with an almost dangerous gift for songs about heartbreak. An Oscar followed in 2015 for the Spectre theme. But the years since have been complicated. Since coming out as non-binary in 2017, Smith has faced sustained attacks from conservative commentators. The glossier pop sound of their subsequent albums remained commercially successful, yet something had shifted in the room around them. "There's some wonderful people that have stayed," Smith says, "but it's a completely different room than it was with In the Lonely Hour."

Three years ago, Smith made a decision that would reshape everything: they moved from the UK to New York to be with their fiancé, designer Christian Cowan, who has hazel eyes—the inspiration for the album's title. The move was not a retreat. "When I got here and was able to walk in the street and feel no judgment, I realised that I was very happy to have found a sanctuary in New York City as a queer person," they explain. The previous album, Gloria, had sparked controversy; the videos for "Unholy" and "I'm Not Here to Make Friends" were accused of being oversexualized, with rhetoric that felt transphobic to many. But Smith had moved for positive reasons, not to escape. They were looking for safety and comfort in music, something that could capture the feeling of falling deeply in love.

For Hazel Eyes, Smith worked with Simon Aldred, a collaborator from their debut who had long urged them toward more intimate songwriting. It became their first album as co-producer—a role Smith had never claimed before, despite being hands-on with their music for years. "I've realised that I'm not just a singer and a songwriter, I'm an artist," they say. The process was looser than anything they'd done before. Instead of the structured, sober writing rooms of their past—the ones that operated between 10am and 5pm—Hazel Eyes emerged from late-night sessions, including tequila-fueled collaborations with the Dap-Kings at 1am. "It just felt so freeing, what music's about," Smith reflects. The album channels a dusky 70s blend of blues, folk, R&B, and outlaw country, with Smith setting a deliberate color palette—a brown, sepia filter—that every song had to honor.

The album marks a return to the singer-songwriter style of their debut, but Smith doesn't see it as repetition. On a track like "My Guy," the lyric is deliberately simple: "He's mine, mine, mine, he's my guy." But Smith is singing it as a non-binary 34-year-old in 2026, a lens through which that traditional sentiment becomes something entirely new. It was only after the global success of "Unholy" in 2023—a song that topped the US charts, won a Grammy, and earned Smith condemnation from conservatives—that they felt free to return to this classic sound. For years, Smith had wanted to reach number one in America; "Stay With Me" had peaked at number two. When "Unholy" finally got them there, something shifted. "I felt like I'd been fighting for that song for a long time," they say.

But the chase for chart dominance had taken a toll. Smith describes themselves as having been at their "most depressed or creatively stunted" during that period. With Hazel Eyes, they wanted to prioritize emotional truth over commercial metrics, over hooks, over the constant pressure to perform for metrics. This created friction with their label—Smith had to insist on keeping the business out of the music. The shift reflects a hard-won understanding of what fame has cost them. Coming out as a young queer artist in their twenties, navigating pronouns changes publicly, building a career while facing sustained vilification—it all accumulated into something that felt, at times, unbearable. For several years starting at twenty-seven, Smith withdrew from the constant selfie-taking, the fan interaction that is a huge part of the job. It gave them privacy but deepened their depression; they felt they were upsetting people every day.

Therapy and time have shifted that calculus. "I actually have started to find the happiness and the joy of meeting people," Smith says now. "I'm a healthy person right now, so I'm able to juggle more." They've also become more protective of their narrative, more willing to claim their achievements without apology. Their sales and streaming figures place them in the echelon of Elton John and Freddie Mercury as queer pop success stories, though Smith is cautious about that comparison. They've found deeper kinship with the artist Anohni, who helped them understand their own lineage as a femme queer artist—a different trajectory than the male icons who came before. "What I've experienced as a queer femme artist on the global pop stage, I don't think there's others that I can compare my career to," they say. "I've learned to see that as a strength."

Two years ago, Smith established the Pink House foundation to support the LGBTQ+ community, a way to focus on the realities of situations and hope for a better future rather than solely on their own legacy. There's at least one tangible tribute to their life in New York: Julius', a gay bar in the West Village with a history of community and rebellion, has photos of Smith on its walls—one by fashion photographer Alasdair McLellan, another of Smith performing with Alicia Keys at a tenth-anniversary celebration of In the Lonely Hour. "If I could be part of the legacy of Julius', that's a legacy I'm proud to be a part of," Smith says, beaming. With Hazel Eyes, they're singing for themselves ultimately, singing to the sky and whoever hears it. The audience will be in flux, as it always is for a political artist, whether they want to be one or not. But that's become, for Smith, not a burden but a freedom.