Listen: Sam Smith debuts “saddest” ever single ‘Drowning Shadows’
By Micah Sulit
Sam Smith’s new single ‘Drowning Shadows’ needs a trigger warning: if you’re feeling particularly lonely today, this haunting new piano ballad will be enough to send you over the edge.
The soul singer’s latest track is a typically tortured love song, but even by the 23-year-old’s sad-core standards this one’s got an extra dose of the blues. Even Sam admits “it’s very, very depressing”.
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The 23-year-old Grammy-winning artist told Beats 1 Radio host Zane Lowe, “I used to get in the taxi back to Oval, where I used to live, from the studio and on the way back to Oval there was a crossroads.
“One road would lead to gay clubs that I used to go out to and then the other road would go home, and I was in such a lonely, sad place when I was writing this album that sometimes I would literally have to choose – the lyric is ‘Do I go home to nothing? Or stay out for more?’ And that was a genuine choice for me some nights.
“I used to go out by myself and drink and try and find love, or I’d just go home and chill. That’s what the song’s about – that decision.”
Sam also revealed that he wrote ‘Drowning Shadows’ before ‘Stay With Me’, ‘I’m Not The Only One’ and a bunch of other hits from In The Lonely Hour. “We were going through production, trying to make it sound really big and stuff, and something didn’t work,” he said.
The song didn’t make the album cut, but Sam said it “suddenly came alive for me again” when he and his pianist tried a stripped-down arrangement.
Listen to ‘Drowning Shadows’ below:
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