Trivia / Sam Smith

• Colbert Bump: Their popularity can most likely be attributed to numerous articles posted about them on BuzzFeed, prior to their debut album's release. In America, it was their SNL performance that made them a star.
• Creator Backlash: Apparently, Smith has this opinion of their performance of "Writing's On The Wall" at the Academy Awards:
  "It was the worst moment of my life... Singing was horrible. I hated every minute of it, I was so nervous."
• Creator Killer: Their live performance of "Writing's on the Wall" at the 2016 Academy Award ceremony is generally regarded as the low point of their career and the reason why their subsequent albums have failed to have the same success as In the Lonely Hour.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: Sam Smith boasted during their Oscar acceptance speech that Sir Ian McKellen recently lamented that "no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar", and that if that were true, then Smith broke the streak. McKellen's lament only applied to the Best Actor Oscar, and Smith quickly learned that several publicly-homosexual filmmakers won in other categories before them. Even counting only Best Song, The Little Mermaid (1989) lyricist Howard Ashman beat him by 26 years to becoming the first openly gay recipient of the award. Even worse was one award recipient the same year politely requesting that Sam stop flirting with their boyfriend.
• Promoted Fanboy: Sam is a huge fan of Fifth Harmony and after the group split, while recording "Dancing with a Stranger", their studio happened to be right next to where Normani was. Sam and Normani met up and collaborated on the song together.
• Referenced by...: The middle section of Canadian figure skater Iliya Kovler's long program from the 2018-2019 competitive season is set to "Writing's on the Wall."
• Similarly Named Works: "Writing's on the Wall" is similar in name to the Destiny's Child album The Writing's on the Wall.

---