Sam Smith

When he was 18 years old, Sam Smith wrote his first truthful song, a flashbulb moment for the brilliant blue-eyed soul singer. Three years later and the song has long since been discarded as a naive folly. Like all singer songwriters that are rich in emotion, knee-deep in their own small personal complications and dependent on their precociously youthful talent to engage with the world, Sam resolved never to write a song again that didn't connect straight from the heart.

Anyone that has seen Sam touring and tearing medium sized venues to pieces with his lacerating grief ballad Lay Me Down will have spotted the more innate appeal of his artistry and its special potential to move at mass market. Sam is a big, softly spoken man who translates musically through the humility of his phrasing. "I write exactly as I speak," he notes. As can be heard clearly and distinctly on his debut album, Sam is all about the feeling. Why does he believe stardom beckons? Smith says, "When it came to writing and delivering I'd worked out that it was all about truth. When you listen to my album, the songs I love and my label love, it's all the personal things. That are relatable to other people."