

Much of his childhood and adolescence, thereafter, was spent in theater rehearsals his mother, then a prominent banker in London, often asked her son to perform for friends and associates at dinner parties. Most of the time, he seems far beyond his years, with a 6’4” frame, a polite eloquence and a subtle, mischievous charm that stems from a near lifetime of professional grooming.īorn in the rural county of Cambridgeshire, England, Smith was placed in formal vocal training with a local jazz singer at the age of 8, after his parents heard him singing along to Whitney Houston’s “My Love Is Your Love” one morning on the drive to his Catholic primary school. Moments like this remind you of Smith’s age it’s easy to forget that he’s only 22. He filters the photo and Instagrams it immediately. “I’m sorry, I just have to take a picture of this,” he says, pulling out his iPhone. His sea blue eyes dart between his hands and the view of Kurfürstendamm, which rolls on endlessly. Dissecting differences between European and American audiences, he talks blithely, with an appreciable daze incurred from crossing so many datelines. Sun ping-pongs off the skyline beneath the 11th floor of a hotel in West Berlin as Sam Smith cups his cappuccino and counts the cities he’s visited in the last 10 days: New York, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, Sydney, London and Amsterdam. This is the third of four covers from our annual Summer Music issue. From the magazine: ISSUE 92, June/July 2014.
