Sam Smith Officially Comes Out As Gay: "I'm Very Comfortable And Happy"
Sam Smith hasn't really spoken openly about his sexuality, though he hasn't worked hard to hide it either. (Witness his video for "Leave Your Lover").
But the British singer put his cards on the table in an interview with The Fader:
[My album] In the Lonely Hour is about a guy that I fell in love with last year, and he didn’t love me back. I think I’m over it now, but I was in a very dark place. I kept feeling lonely in the fact that I hadn’t felt love before. I’ve felt the bad things. And what’s a more powerful emotion: pain or happiness?
I told him about it recently, and obviously it was never going to go the way I wanted it to go, because he doesn’t love me. But it was good as a form of closure, to get it off my chest and tell him. I feel better for it. I feel almost like I signed off this part of my life where I keep giving myself to guys who are never going to love me back. It feels good to have interviews like this, to chat about it and put stuff to bed. It’s all there now, and I can move on and hopefully find a guy who can love me the way I love him.
He might be mending a broken heart, but Smith is hardly torn up about being gay. "I’m very comfortable and happy with everything," he tells the magazine. "I just wanted to talk about him and have it out there. It’s about a guy and that’s what I wanted people to know—I want to be clear that that’s what it’s about. I’ve been treated as normal as anyone in my life; I’ve had no issues. I do know that some people have issues in life, but I haven’t, and it’s as normal as my right arm."
Smith, 21, hopes to make his sexuality a "nonissue" and is concerned with how the media and the public likes to pigeonhole performers:
In the short time I’ve lived on this Earth, all I’ve seen are boxes. People put things in boxes; it makes it easier to digest information. People say I’m the new Adele. Why is [gender] a talking point? I’m singing, I’m making music, I’m performing my music—that’s what should be the talking point.
