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"If you go into my library of music, I only listen to women. "I feel like my voice is genderless, and I’ve trained it to be that way," Sam said. They also expanded on the role of music in their life now, and how it's deeply entwined with their identity and has been a source of solace in the past. I’ve realized now that people weren’t understanding me." I remember releasing the album thinking that it would be heard in that way - that it was a queer record - but it wasn’t taken like that. "I was singing songs about a married man I’d fallen in love with, and we did not kiss, nothing happened between us, but I was so in love with him, and I was tortured. I look back on those videos of me when I was 20, and I see a feminine energy," they said. I’m in a suit and in that suit, I was channeling Judy Garland. "I had that with my first album, In the Lonely Hour. For Sam, their music has always been queer the public has simply failed to recognize it as such.
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Interestingly, when ALOK notes that Sam's comment hints at a very non-binary way of approaching their music, Sam reveals they've been trying to erase any kind of binary or cishet thinking around their music since their first album, In the Lonely Hour, was released in 2014. I’m trying to fly the flag a little bit and say that simple music isn’t simple." This album is me basically telling everyone to fuck off. Pop music is fine art…I love the muse side of each of those genres as much as I do the commercial, but I’ve been made to feel ashamed throughout my career for loving pop so much. Britney, Christina, Madonna, and Beyoncé - I believe their art is fine art. When I say that Britney Spears basically saved me as a kid, I’m not saying that lightly. To this, Sam replied, "It’s something that’s been a fight within me for so long because I love all types of music. We’ve spoken a lot about how you don’t feel like you have to compromise artistic integrity while existing in a pop space." Early on, ALOK remarked, "I feel like you’re playing with binaries more generally - like the one between fine art and pop. In the process, Sam's fans have watched as they've begun speaking fearlessly about their identity with the world.Īs part of the Out 100 issue, the magazine crowned Sam with the superlative "Evolution of the Year." In the interview, Sam chatted with their close friend ALOK about their big milestones from the past year and how Sam is not only erasing binary lines in their daily life, but in their music and creative work as well. Earlier in 2019, Sam came out as non-binary and, a short while later, revealed their pronouns as they/them. Read about more of the past album of the year champs below.It's been an incredibly formative year for singer-songwriter Sam Smith. Singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves is the current album of the year holder, winning in 2019 for Golden Hour. With Fearless, Swift surpassed Alanis Morissette as the category's youngest victor at 20 years old.
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Two of the award's latest recipients, Adele and Swift, are the only women to have taken home the high honor more than once for 21 and 25, as well as Fearless and 1989, respectively. Sinatra, however, ranks among the select group of repeat album of the year winners, which also includes Tom Coyne, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Some more recent album of the year winners include Kacey Musgraves, Bruno Mars, Adele, Beck, Taylor Swift, Daft Punk and Mumford & Sons, but the honor dates all the way back to Henry Mancini's inaugural win for The Music From Peter Gun, which beat out industry legends like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Though several musicians have been decorated many times over with golden gramophones, only an elite few have secured the top prize since America's grandest music ceremony began in 1959.
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Nothing marks success in a musician's career quite like a Grammy Award - especially the most coveted statue in the race, album of the year.