A mainstream artist making noises about their forthcoming release being “the album I always wanted to make” is the kind of thing that makes record companies nervous. It comes with the implicit suggestion that the music that made them famous wasn’t quite the ticket, and the sense that the fans who loved said music might be in for a shock. But when that artist is Sam Smith – who has said just that about their fourth album, Gloria, bolstered by a press release talking up the album’s “edgy, experimental” nature – it’s worth remembering that we’ve been here before. Smith couched Gloria’s predecessor in similar terms: their third album Love Goes was supposedly “experimental”, and “allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be in the studio that day” etc. As it turned out, it was about as experimental as a packet of digestive biscuits, unless said experiment involved amping up the singer’s trademark romantic misery even further than before. The sense that Smith might not be the best judge of their own work, at least when it comes to its ability to spring surprises, thus took shape.
