Samuel Frederick Smith (born 19 May 1992) is an English singer and songwriter. In October 2012, they[a] were featured on Disclosure’s breakthrough single “Latch”, which peaked at number eleven on the UK Singles Chart. They were featured on Naughty Boy’s “La La La”, which became a number one single in May 2013.

Smith’s debut studio album, In the Lonely Hour, was released in May 2014 on Capitol Records UK. The album’s lead single, “Lay Me Down”, was released prior to “La La La”. The album’s second single, “Money on My Mind”, became their second number one single in the UK. The third single, “Stay with Me”, was internationally successful, reaching number one in the UK and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, while subsequent singles “I’m Not the Only One” and “Like I Can” reached the top ten in the UK. The album won four awards, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and nominations for Album of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.

For Smith’s and Jimmy Napes’s song “Writing’s on the Wall”, the theme for the James Bond film Spectre (2015), they won the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Smith’s second studio album, The Thrill of It All, was released in November 2017 and debuted atop the UK and US album charts. The lead single, “Too Good at Goodbyes”, reached number one in the UK and Australia and number four in the US. Following the 2018 single “Promises” with Calvin Harris, which peaked at number one in the UK, Smith released “Dancing with a Stranger” with Normani in 2019, which reached the top ten in the UK and the US and was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards; and later “How Do You Sleep?”, all of which feature on their third album, Love Goes (2020).[10] In 2022, Smith’s single “Unholy” with Kim Petras, from Smith’s fourth album Gloria (2023), became their first number one single in the US and won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Smith’s achievements include five Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, and an American Music Award, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. Smith is the first openly non-binary musician to both release a song that reached No. 1 at the Billboard Hot 100 and to win a Grammy Award.

Samuel Frederick Smith was born in London on 19 May 1992, to Frederick Smith and broker Kate Cassidy. Smith grew up in Great Chishill, where they attended Thomas More Primary School. They were bullied for having breasts as a child and underwent liposuction at age 12. As part of Youth Music Theatre UK, Smith appeared in the troupe’s 2007 production of Oh! Carol, a musical featuring the music of Neil Sedaka. Before entering the musical theatre, they had been in jazz bands. While studying singing and songwriting under jazz pianist Joanna Eden for a number of years, Smith attended St Mary’s Catholic School in Bishop’s Stortford and was a member of the Bishop’s Stortford Junior Operatics (now Bishops Stortford Musical Theatre Society) and the Cantate Youth Choir. Smith attended the Anglican St Mary the Virgin, Saffron Walden, with family members, as a youth. Smith released two singles, “Bad Day All Week” in 2008 and “When It’s Alright” in 2009.

Smith was featured on the Disclosure song “Latch”, which was released on 8 October 2012 and peaked at No. 11 on the UK Singles Chart. In February 2013, Smith released the first single from their debut album, “Lay Me Down”, and later in the year featured on Naughty Boy’s single “La La La”. It was released on 19 May 2013 and peaked at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Smith’s first EP Nirvana was released the following year. The first song on the EP, titled “Safe with Me”, is produced by Two Inch Punch and was first broadcast on MistaJam’s BBC Radio 1Xtra show on 24 July 2013. The second song on the EP is titled “Nirvana” and is produced by Craze & Hoax and Jonathan Creek. The EP also includes Smith’s acoustic solo version of “Latch” and a live version of “I’ve Told You Now”. Smith released the Disclosure, Nile Rodgers, and Jimmy Napes collaboration “Together” on 25 November 2013 as the only single from Settle: The Remixes. In December 2013, Smith was nominated for the 2014 Brit Critics’ Choice Award and the BBC’s Sound of 2014 poll, winning both.

The second single from Smith’s debut album, titled “Money on My Mind”, was released on 16 February 2014. It was announced on 16 December that Smith’s debut studio album, titled In the Lonely Hour, would be released on 26 May 2014 through Capitol Records. Smith described the album as “all about unrequited love” stemming from personal experience, having never been loved back by any previous love interests. The album reached number one in the UK Albums Chart and number two on the Billboard 200, and by 5 November it had become the second biggest selling album of 2014 in the US behind only 1989 by Taylor Swift. In January 2015, In the Lonely Hour was named the second best selling album of 2014 in the UK, behind x by Ed Sheeran. A live version of album track “I’ve Told You Now”, performed at St Pancras Old Church, was made available as a free download as part of an Amazon.com promotion on 27 December 2013. The album track “Make It To Me”, co-written by Howard of Disclosure and Jimmy Napes, was made available as a free download as part of an iTunes Store promotion on 13 January 2014. Smith went on their debut American headlining tour in the second quarter of 2014, with a setlist of primarily new material. On 20 January 2014, Smith made their American television debut performing “Latch” with Disclosure on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Smith also performed on Saturday Night Live on 29 March 2014, performing the gospel-tinged “Stay with Me” and an acoustic version of “Lay Me Down”. “Stay with Me” reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100. The fourth single from the album, “I’m Not the Only One”, reached number three in the UK and number five in the US. Smith performed “Stay With Me” live at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards on 24 August at The Forum in Inglewood, California. On 15 November 2014, they joined the charity group Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording the latest version of the track “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the 2014 Ebola crisis in Western Africa.