Sam Smith - The Thrill of It All

The Guardian 60

An outpouring of authentically moving romantic misery, this could have joined the ranks of the all-time great breakup albums – if only the backing music weren’t so stale

As Sam Smith recently tearfully confessed to a New York Times journalist, the songs on his second album were provoked by the collapse of a five-month relationship. On the one hand, this sounds like a pretty sad state of affairs. On the other, you can’t help thinking: ker-ching!

It’s over 60 years since Frank Sinatra poured the misery of his disintegrating marriage to Ava Gardner into In the Wee Small Hours, and the breakup album has been with us ever since. Yet they’ve seldom been so much of a commercial force as in the last decade or so. Everyone from Coldplay to Kanye West seems to have one – Taylor Swift appears to produce nothing but. The two most commercially successful British releases of this century are breakup albums: Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Adele’s 21, the latter such a blockbuster that it spawned a sequel. When it came time to follow up the 30m-selling smash, the now happily married singer simply returned to picking over a failed relationship – presumably the same one that had inspired its predecessor – shifting another 20m albums in the process. You’d have to go back 40 years, to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, to find the multifarious sorrows of the failed relationship selling product in such quantity. Never mind, plenty more fish in the sea, and besides, think of the sales figures.

Pitchfork 58

The second album from the pop crooner uses the same method that made his debut such a commercial success. His spectacular voice doles out feelings in terms everyone can understand.

The Guardian 40

(Capitol)

You assume that the title of Sam Smith’s long-awaited second album – The Thrill of It All – is a slightly weary one, weighing up the emotional cost of partying. Smith said as much on the BBC the other night.

Actual thrills are scarce on these 10 tracks, which fulfil the brief of following up a hit album with a bankable sequel. These are songs dealing with heartbreak, coming out and the parlous state of the world in time-honoured, mainstream fashion: by making the sounds so palatable that any real sense of suffering is lost.

Pray finds Smith struggling with agnosticism but resorting to more gospel choirs

Drowned In Sound 30

When an artist bankrolled by a major label performs a song about not having money on his mind (as Smith did on his debut album), it’s hard not to question his general sincerity. When you keep your title track off the main record and reserve it for the special edition, as with The Thrill of it All , you have to ponder the motives.

The real disappointment, however, comes from the feeling that Smith's second record is a missed opportunity. Ahead of its release, Smith talked about going through a vortex and coming out the other side. That sort of time in life strikes me as the perfect moment to capture when making a record but there’s absolutely no indication here that any of that happened. His voice, which is as strong as ever, conveys sadness well but little else. The first single, ‘Too Good at Goodbyes’, foreshadowed what to expect in this regard, in that he manages to sound pretty good while the rest is palpably lacking.

Sonically, the album sets itself out with a sort of retro soul, featuring gospel like choirs and echoey guitars that recall U2 at their most dreary. The result is that you feel like you’ve heard the record before you even reach the end - if Smith’s voice is his major strength then it’s bizarre that it isn’t given more space to shine.

It’d be naive in the extreme to expect the record to do anything else, though. The Thrill of It All was an immense success before it was even released. If millions are going to be listening, why choose topics or sounds that aren’t going to resonate in some way to the majority of those people? The answer is that you don’t. Smith has said he wasn’t trying to make a big pop record… but that’s exactly what he’s done. The thing is, if I want heartbreak and misery then there are artists out there who do it with far more poignancy and originality. You can’t really deliver heartbreak and strife, even with his voice, when everything on the record has been diluted down to the point that anyone can access it. Heartbreak is difficult, and this is anything but.

Still, perhaps a lot of these decisions are not entirely in his hands because The Thrill of It All, beneath its significant flaws, does manage to showcase a sincerity in Sam Smith we’ve not witnessed before. The by-numbers production and topics notwithstanding, it’s much easier to take Smith seriously this time around. ‘Say It First’ is track about who should say I love you first, while ‘Pray’ discusses his reaction to a trip to Iraq.

Unfortunately, none of that saves the record from being underwhelming. I applaud Smith for making me believe what he has to say but it’s not enough to build a strong record if what you’re saying isn’t that interesting. Nobody expected Smith to reinvent the wheel on his second album, but anything is better than limping along on a flat tyre.