This year, I’ve challenged myself to write a review of every song that manages to get to No. 1 in the UK charts. Here’s the latest one:
I have talked about Sam Smith before. In particular, I’ve talked about how he isn’t as good as Ellie Goulding. “Sam Smith,” I argued, “warbles over his songs like he’s broken a leg during recording, only serving to distract the listener from the song at hand (something which can be fatal for songs like Like I Can which rely on you having an emotional connection to them)”. I then concluded this by saying that “Sam Smith makes singing with emotion seem like such hard work [while] Ellie Goulding makes it look effortless.” Harsh words.
My problem with Sam Smith is that, at heart, I’m a minimalist. This comes from my view of writing: anyone can spend thousands of words spinning a sprawling yarn in order to create one singular effect, but anyone who’s capable of using less words to achieve the same effect must be the better writer because they’re the ones who can use the tools of their trade more effectively and efficiently (thus implying a greater understanding of their craft and the greater ability to put that understanding in action). The same goes for singers: a singer who can communicate a emotion in three notes is better to me than the singer who needs ten notes. Sam Smith warbles all over his songs so as to communicate the idea of a man who’s torn, confused and hurt by love (punning on the idea of instability; his vocal style being all over the place to imply the idea that he can’t keep himself together), but Sting was able to communicate the same ideas in the chorus to So Lonely and he did that by just shouting the words “I’m so lonely!” over and over again.
And of course some would argue that a singer who can sing all the notes under the sun one after another is the better singer because they have a high technical ability and extended range. A good point, but that position seems to assume that all is needed for good art is raw materials. Good singing isn’t being able to hit every note under the sun, it’s knowing which emotion you want to communicate in a song, which note will communicate which emotion and then how to deliver that note so the needed emotion gets said. You could know every word in every dictionary in the world, but if you don’t know what word will improve your sentence, then you’re a bad writer. The same goes for music and notes.
The thing is, Lay Me Down proves that Sam Smith can take a more minimal approach and absolutely nail it. Take the way he sings “Can I lay by your side?” by just shouting all of the words in one note one after the other. Usually the multitude of notes that he’d have used would have distracted from the emotion in his voice but here it just comes pouring out; with nothing to hide behind, the emotion is forced to reveal itself, raw and naked, just like emotion should be. He does do some multi-note twaddery in the “Next to you, you” line, yes, but it’s actually really small and refined in comparison to how he usually sings; it reads more as him covering himself back up after his big reveal, doing so in preparation of revealing himself again during the next chorus. It’s honest, it’s raw, it’s real. It’s everything Sam Smith should be to me. It’s great.
The problem is that I’m not reviewing the Sam Smith version of the song; the version of the song I am reviewing is the re-recorded version featuring John Legend which was released for Comic Relief 2015. And the problem is that the inclusion of John Legend makes the song no different: the way he sings in this song is too close to the way Sam Smith does, making it difficult to actually tell who is singing in certain bits at all.
But actually, John Legend’s inclusion does make the song different. It makes it very different. Because the original song is about one man’s desire to lie with another person; it’s about intimacy and personal space. And this sense of intimacy and personal space gets utterly destroyed once you include a second person into it. Just how is this version of the song supposed to work? Are they singing about the same person? Are they in competition for that person’s affections? Do they want that person to lie with both of them at the same time? Are they singing about different people and are alternating lines which just so happen to luckily sum up both of their positions? This song just stops working when two people sing it; you can’t have an intimate love song between a narrator and someone else when that narrator is two separate people.
So yes, Lay Me Down is a good song. I’d call it the best solo song that Sam Smith has ever released. But the Comic Relief version with John Legend doesn’t work: Legend’s voice adds nothing to the track, and his inclusion overall just confuses it. Stick with the original.
TheWrittenTevs 