Sam Smith came out as gay publicly in 2014 after their debut album was released because they didn’t want their sexual orientation to be reduced to a rumor or guesswork. The Too Good at Goodbyes hitmaker was very certain of their sexuality since they were a child. They said that they came out as gay when they were 10. But, later on, Sam Smith said in an interview that they always identified as non-binary despite being labeled as a gay male.
Sam Smith is an English singer and songwriter who rose to mainstream stardom with the release of their debut album In the Lonely Hour in 2021. The album spawned massively hit singles, all of them reaching the top 10 in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart or in the UK Singles Chart. The album won big at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year.
Their sophomore album The Thrill of It All debuted atop the UK and the US album charts. Its lead single Too Good at Goodbyes reached number one in the UK and Australia and number four in the US. Sam Smith released their third album Love Goes in 2020 with some features. In 2022, they released their fourth album Gloria. Its single Unholy with Kim Petras became their first number-one single in the US and it recently won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.
Throughout their career, their sexuality has always been up for speculation even though they have been very vocal about their sexual identity. People are always wondering about their sexual orientation with many of them thinking that they are gay. But gay, they had been once, now they are genderqueer. Learn more about Sam Smith’s sexuality!
Previously, we learned about the sexual orientation of Tenzing Norgay Trainor and Wilmer Valderrama.
Is Sam Smith Gay? What’s His Sexual Orientation? Fans Are Curious About His Sexuality!
Sam Smith (@samsmith) had publicly come out as gay in 2014 when they released his debut studio album. But five years later, in 2019, they claimed to have identified as non-binary despite being labeled as a gay male.
There are a lot of questions surrounding Sam Smith’s sexuality and there are going to be because there’s no absolute answer if you go by what they have claimed. Are they gay or aren’t they? They once said that they are. But now, they say they are non-binary which means they are not exclusively male or female. However, they’re still attracted to men. So, what does that make them? What’s their sexual orientation? They’re not gay, they’re genderqueer.
If you thought that Sam Smith was gay, you have not been keeping up but yeah, everyone thought the same for a long time till Sam came out as non-binary in 2019. Before that, they were gay as he revealed himself to be at the beginning of their mainstream music career. In 2014, just after the release of their debut album, the pop star did something daring and revolutionary when they came out as gay.
Sam Smith said that they did so because they didn’t want to leave their sexuality up for questions and speculations and wanted everyone to know that they were a proud gay man. The English singer really didn’t care for the ‘is he or isn’t he’ kind of speculation going around the topic of their sexual orientation. They were gay and they knew it and they wanted everyone to know it because they had nothing to hide.
Sam Smith was attracted to men and most of the songs in their first album In the Lonely Hour were about longing for a man – a straight, married man who obviously didn’t feel the same way about them. Stay with Me was about wanting a man to stay even when he’s not in love and Good Thing‘s a song about deciding that they have stayed long enough waiting so, they dream that they die in the arms of the man they love after they get mugged outside his door. If they hadn’t come out as gay, the music video would have done that for them – announced loudly that the artist is gay.
The signs that their sexual orientation was not straight were there from the very beginning since Sam Smith was a child. The Too Good at Goodbyes hitmaker wore a full face of makeup, fake eyelashes, and elaborate arrangements of flowers pinned to their lapel and all-over sprinkling glitter to their school – a Catholic school in Great Chishill, a village one hour and a half from London. Back then, if a man dressed as flamboyantly as that, he would automatically be deemed gay based on that and bullied for being gay. Though clothing may nothing to do with sexuality all the time, this time it had.
Kids teased them and bullied them for their dressing sense and for looking gay but Sam Smith was unapologetic about the way they dressed and expressed. And one time when someone at school asked them if they were gay, they said that they were because they knew already. They had no moment in which they were confused about their sexuality. They were gay and they knew it.
Even their mother knew that they were since they were 3. Sam Smith had a lot of gay mannerisms. Like they would push the strands of hair behind their ears even when they didn’t have hair long enough to do that. And they would pretend they’d gotten hair stuck to their lips and pick it away when the windows were open in the car.
They were always gay like that but in 2019, in an interview with GQ UK, Sam Smith rewrote their history in which they were gay when they claimed that they always identified as non-binary despite being labeled as a ‘gay male’ even though it was them who came out as gay. They explained that they always felt queer.
That’s never really been me. I’ve always felt queer. I’ve always felt non-binary trans. My whole life. And it wasn’t until I had to sit in interviews every day and tell people my story again and again and again that I realised this narrative that was being created was only a small fraction of who I was.
In an interview with Jameela Jamil, Sam Smith revealed that they were neither male nor female but they floated somewhere in between. They explained,
I’ve always had a little bit of a war going within my body and my mind. I do think like a woman sometimes, in my head. Sometimes I’ve questioned, ‘Do I want a sex change?’ and it’s something I still think about, like: ‘Do I want to?’ But I don’t think it is. When I saw the words’ non-binary’ and ‘genderqueer’ and I read into it, and I heard this person speaking, I was like ‘F*ck, that’s me.’
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