"Latch" was an explosion no one saw coming, a perfect pop smash from an unknown artist. The singer, pompadoured London dynamo Sam Smith, who used the sprightly beat from the house music duo Disclosure to model a preternatural ease in skating across two octaves, didn't appear to be that invested in the dance of being seen and perceived in the public eye. In the Lonely Hour, Smith's 2014 debut album, was an elaborate performance of meekness from the concept-it's about a nagging unrequited crush-to the presentation. Success had been elusive before the Disclosure hit, a yearslong trail of promising leads that went nowhere. Nobody seemed to know what to do with the voice. (The awkward, scrappy pre-fame recordings on the Sam Smith Diva Boy collection tell that story.) It eluded the listener's handle on genre and gender; Disclosure's Guy Lawrence thought he heard a Black woman singing in the demo that landed Smith the spot on "Latch." These were not the simpler times implied by the current wave of nostalgia for the late aughts, not if you were living outside the cookie-cutter ideas about sexuality and gender expression that prevailed at the time. The pressure Smith felt to fit in and make music that appealed to everyone was a side effect of toiling toward a career in pop music as the press hounded Britney Spears and gay rumors trailed Robbie Williams to the extent that he named his 2013 big-band album Swings Both Ways.
The work it has taken to shake free from the obligation to coddle the audience has been the story of Smith's music and public presence since the singer came out as nonbinary in 2019. Now they write songs about seeking unconditional love and bolstering self-esteem instead of jams about clinging to people who may not even be aware of their feelings.
Denne historien er fra January 30 - February 12, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra January 30 - February 12, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
