autographed sam smith in the lonely hour vinyl

The first verse begins “Following the rights movement, you clamped on with your iron fists / Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids.” This was not music to be misinterpreted. The fake out opening of “Prison Song” sets you on edge, the gap of silence between the first DUN and the remaining seeming to grow every time you turn it on. Not only did America, and the rest of the world for that matter, need Toxicity they never stopped needing Toxicity. Add up the YouTube views for the music videos of those singles - each uploaded several years after the album’s release - and you reach an eye watering two billion and counting. Instead, Toxicity went triple platinum, each single peaking higher than the last. Here was a stridently political band releasing a heavy metal album exactly one week before an event so devastating that it was assumed it would annihilate America’s appetite for heavy metal and stridently political bands. That other event is now inseparable from Toxicity’s legacy.

The album’s team of producers gives Smith a mostly blank canvas to showcase his vocals, providing room for soaring riffs over fingerpicked guitars on “Not in That Way” and “Leave Your Lover.” But neither leaves as indelible a mark as Smith’s lost love has left on his heart.May not have heard about. Elsewhere, though he reaches for his upper register with the same eagerness that he grasps for love, his emo hopelessness is a flood drowning everything in sight. He rolls deepest on the gospel-powered “Stay With Me” – a spare track with a simple arrangement that matches its bare plea – and “Like I Can,” a blissful groove that packs a Seventies rock-radio punch. But while the album flirts with a few radiant moments, Smith’s endless yearning isn’t wrapped in as many irresistible packages.

Smith – a gifted blue-eyed-soulster with Barry Gibb’s flexible falsetto and Mark Ronson’s ear for throwback grooves – got noticed last year for his vocals on house duo Disclosure’s slow jam “Latch.” With In the Lonely Hour‘s orchestral flourishes and focus on a single unrealized affair, it seems the baby-faced singer is being positioned as a male Adele. Where do lonely hearts go? British singer Sam Smith, 21, has written a dissertation on the question with his debut LP.

Autographed sam smith in the lonely hour vinyl