Following February's "Love Is A Stillness," Sam Smith is back with another heart string-pulling single "To Be Free." Co-written with longtime collaborator Simon Aldred, the song is a graceful ballad with a soulful chorus. Smith has an immensely powerful voice all on their own, but they get some help from the TwoCity Chorus to take the track to new heights.
“I've never had a recording experience like I did making this song. It’s one vocal and guitar take from start to finish -- one live performance of me and my friend Simon Aldred in a pure state of music and expression,” Smith said about the track. “I wrote it five years ago while writing my last album Gloria and then parked it because I knew it was not a song for that album. It was created during a time in my life where I became free within myself.”
They also explained that rivers were a major inspiration for the track and the music they've been making with Aldred over the last five years. Smith adds, "With this song, the visual of rivers kept coming into my mind and into my heart. I grew up next to a little river in Cambridgeshire in the countryside of England. Then I moved to London and lived by the Thames, and now I live by the Hudson River. Rivers have been in my life a lot. So I found it interesting to think of my music and my expression as an artist as a river," they said.
The song comes with a video directed by (LA)HORDE. It depicts a crowd of joyful people running and dancing through the halls of Brooklyn venue Warsaw. Smith also announced that they will be doing a series of 12 shows at said Brooklyn venue this October.
Watch the video and find the upcoming show dates below.
