British singer-songwriter Sam Smith has gone straight to the top of the UK charts with his debut album ‘In The Lonely Hour’.<br /><br />The 22-year-old’s album sold 101,000 copies in just seven days, knocking Coldplay’s ‘Ghost Stories’ into second place after a week at number one.<br /><br />Sam Smith explained the inspiration behind his music: “With this album I wanted to create a concept piece, and so I decided to focus on something that I feel really strongly about – which is unrequited love and how that form of love is just as important as other forms of love. I spent my whole life kind of being pitied, I guess, in a way, because I have never been in a relationship myself… it is a melancholy album, but it’s also a hopeful album.”<br /><br />Smith says that his label encourages him to be himself: “As soon as a label starts telling you they want you wearing this, wearing that, sounding like this, sounding like that – that’s for me, when the alarm bells come on because that’s you, the way I dress, the way I talk in interviews, the way I do all of this, that’s me. That’s me creating that.”<br /><br />Smith’s painful story of unrequited love has naturally drawn comparisons to Adele’s album ‘21’, but Smith insists his work does not fall into any specific genre.<br /><br />For tour dates and more information about Sam Smith see his official site.
