Sam Smith has shared a brand new song called To Be Free.
The song comes with a video filmed at Warsaw, a popular live music venue in Brooklyn, New York. Alongside the release Smith has announced they will be undertaking a 12 date residency at the venue this October.
The soulful tune was written alongside longtime collaborator Simon Aldred.
“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.”
The singer also shared that rivers were a big inspiration for the song. Smith said they have always lived near rivers.
“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.”
Since first coming to attention through his collaborations with Disclosure in 2012, Smith has put out four albums of solo material.
Their debut album In the Lonely Hour was released in 2014, and follow ups have included The Thrill Of It All in 2017, and Love Goes in 2020. Their most recent album was 2023’s Gloria. Earlier this year they shared the single Love Is a Stillness.
