Sam Smith was already in possession of four Grammys, two Brits and the exclusive bragging rights of being the only artist to sell more than 1m copies of an album in both the UK and US last year.
On Sunday, he added the illicit, regicide thrill of causing Madonna’s second major stumble in a month – his debut album In the Lonely Hour’s now regular return to the top of the charts torpedoed the coronation of Madge’s Rebel Heart. It also made a nice matching pair with Smith’s number-one Comic Relief single, a duet with Oscar winner John Legend. No biggie.
If Smith’s singular, double-cream voice and deluxe technical ability have always suggested unlimited potential, the rest of his pop persona is catching up fast. At one point during this gig – the opening night of a UK tour in venues he could easily have sold out four times over – a dozen spotlights suddenly snap to focus on the sharp-suited 22-year-old and his disarming smile, and it barely seems sufficient.
The voice is still the thing. The audience hears Smith before they see him, gliding in on the sweeping strings of Life Support, an early test and demonstration of his higher register acrobatics. “I want to hear you Glasgow!” he says, and the crowd oblige twice over, with delirious cascades of proper, pop star-welcoming screams alternating with impassioned, word-perfect recitals of key lines from Leave Your Lover and Like I Can, both songs about attempted love heists.
Smith’s eight-piece band – three silky backing singers, keyboard, guitar, bass, drums and a chap on electric cello – occasionally threaten to flatten a song into a smooth jazz pancake, although a finger-clicking, darkly dramatic cover of My Funny Valentine feels like a persuasive Bond-theme audition: sigh another day.
Introducing the delicate piano of Make It to Me, Smith explains that he originally wanted it to be a love letter to his first boyfriend “whoever that may be”.
His songs still cast him as the heartsick, perenially thwarted romantic underdog, but his growing confidence is equally appealing. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” he says, ahead of a triumphant, roof-busting Stay With Me, “but this has been my favourite night of the tour so far.”
Now he’s mastered flirting, the world doesn’t stand a chance.
