If this is the case – even if it isn’t the case – I want to dedicate this to the LGBT community all around the world.” He accepted the Oscar for best original song for “Writing’s on the Wall”, from Spectre, the James Bond movie, referring to an article he’d read in which Ian McKellen had “said that no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar. “I am Sam Smith, the singer who happens to be gay.” He gave an interview where he talked about Grindr and Tinder, the hook-up apps, and how sad it was that all the possibility behind love and serendipity came down to a swiping culture, and saying this offended some in the gay community too. “I am not Sam Smith, the gay singer,” he said at the time. He told Rolling Stone that he “had to be careful” so that straight people could sing along with his music, too. And, on the deluxe edition of the album, a cover of Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” which was not a sad song until he sang it.

Nearly every song was about this: “Stay With Me”, the sad song about wanting a man to stay even when it’s clear he’s not in love “Good Thing”, the sad song about deciding that he’s stayed too long waiting around – that one begins with a vision of him getting mugged outside the man’s door and dying in his arms like Éponine. In The Lonely Hour was a little more than a half-hour crying jag about longing for a man – a straight, married one he was in love with whom he never so much as kissed. Album reviews: Sam Smith, Stereophonics, Maroon 5, Bob Dylan.

Sam smith in the lonely hour deluxe art