“She deserves it way more than I do. I’d be embarrassed if I got it over her. If I got it, I’d give it to her.”
Sam Smith had that to say on Beyonce recently, revealing that he intends to hand her a Grammy award if he beats her to win one at next month’s ceremony.
He announced his plans during a tell-all interview with ‘Rolling Stone’ which hits stands this Friday, also sharing details on bullying he faced during his teen years and why he is bored of being compared to ‘Cold Shoulder‘ chanteuse Adele.
His words below…
Pieces pulled from ‘The Liberation of Sam Smith‘ read:
Smith is tired of being tagged the “male Adele.”
Smith calls Adele “my Michael Jackson” – he’s been a fan since he was 16 – but says, “We’re very different, and I feel like the constant comparisons might piss her off.” He adds, “It just annoys me that people can’t digest two pop stars singing really personal songs who don’t look like normal pop stars.”While Smith aims to change perceptions of what a typical pop star needs to look like, he has his insecure moments.
“I just want to lose weight for the Grammys, if I’m honest,” says Smith, who is currently on a cayenne-pepper juice regimen ahead of the biggest night of his career. “I’m just very body-conscious. Sometimes I’m really proud that I don’t look like other pop stars. But there’s also moments where I’m like, ‘Ugh, I wish I had abs like Bieber.'”He wouldn’t mind losing a Grammy — to Beyoncé.
Smith is a longtime Beyoncé superfan; he’s been known to sing “Drunk in Love” in the shower and knows all the moves from the video. He’s facing off against Bey in the Album of the Year category, and Smith insists he’d rather see his hero win. “She deserves it way more than I do,” he says. “I’d be embarrassed if I got it over her. If I got it, I’d give it to her.”His first experience with heartbreak still makes him cry.
As a young teen, Smith wrote a “really intense” love letter to a popular, artistic kid two years older than him. The student turned out to be straight, but he wrote a long, thoughtful letter back, saying he only saw Smith as a friend. “It makes me emotional, actually,” Smith says, his eyes clouding up. “He looked out for me for the rest of school. He just made sure that if anyone took the piss out of me, he would stick up for me. He could have made it hell for me, you know?”He was bullied after coming out.
Smith maintains that his childhood was happy “80 percent of the time,” but he details several painful experiences he had growing up. Once, as he was walking through his small hometown with his dad, someone drove by and yelled “faggot.” “I was just embarrassed that my dad had to see that, because I could only imagine how you feel as a parent. You just want to kill them. I was always embarrassed for the people around me. It actually never deeply affected me, you know?” The worst incident happened after he moved out of his small hometown. Soon after arriving in London, he was attacked while walking around in makeup. “I got punched in my neck, just out of nowhere,” Smith says. “It wasn’t the easiest.”