Global megastar Sam Smith is confirmed to perform as part of the 2020 ARIA Awards with an exclusive performance from the famous Abbey Road Studios in London.
The ARIA Awards ceremony will be held at The Star Event Centre in Sydney and broadcast around Australia on the Nine Network, with performances showcased around the world on YouTube.
“Australia has always held such a special place in my heart, and I am so honoured to be a part of this year’s ARIA Awards! I’ll be crossing live from London with a very special performance for you all. I can’t wait to see you soon! – Sam x”
Dan Rosen, ARIA Chief Executive, said, “It is a great honour to be able to welcome one of the world’s biggest stars Sam Smith to this year’s ARIA Awards. While the COVID pandemic means that our international guests cannot be physically with us, we are excited to take the ARIAs to the world’s stages. And what a thrill to have an ARIA performance from the world’s most famous studio Abbey Road. We cannot wait to bring Sam from the hallowed Abbey Road to the 2020 ARIA Awards.”
One of the most successful acts on the planet, four-time GRAMMY Award winner Sam Smith has dominated the decade in pop, selling over 25 million albums worldwide, including 750,000 in Australia. Amassing an enormous global following, reaching 30 billion streams worldwide, along with over 10 million subscribers on their YouTube channel. Sam Smith has received an array of the most coveted and prestigious awards across the globe, including three BRITs, four GRAMMYs, as well as an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the James Bond theme “Writing’s On The Wall”.
Heavily acclaimed since the start of their career, Smith’s 2014 release “In The Lonely Hour” was the UK’s biggest selling debut album of the decade and reached the number 1 spot on charts across the globe. Their sophomore album “The Thrill Of It All” also achieved widespread critical acclaim, with their first two albums reaching number 1 and becoming multi-platinum selling records. In 2019, the “The Thrill Of It All” world tour sold over 1 million tickets. Recently in collaboration with Normani, “Dancing with a Stranger” was the second most played song in the world in 2019 selling over 13 million copies, and smash hit “How Do You Sleep?” has had over 1.5 billion views alone. They have also collaborated with Calvin Harris on chart topping single “Promises.”
This year Smith’s raw songwriting talents have extended to one of their most personal creations yet, the release of their highly anticipated third studio album “Love Goes.” This release signifies a new chapter in Sam’s life, reflecting on the past with a sense of catharsis, understanding and acceptance, mainly through the challenges of painful heartbreak.
Speaking to their fans about the creation of their third offering, Smith detailed the liberating process of creating the album.
‘”The last two years has been the most experimental time of my life, personally but also musically. Every time I went into the studio, I promised myself I would shoot for the stars and have no limitations. The result has been so magical and so therapeutic and FUN.” Smith wrote, “My love for music is so broad and all of my musical guilty pleasures became pleasures. No guilt, no shame, just the love of singing and creating and dancing. I am so thankful to every human who embraced my creativity and direction and allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be in that studio on that day…listen to these songs with an open heart and treat each song like a different flower from the garden, have fun with them, I tried not to take myself too seriously when writing a few of these songs. I hope they make you smile because they made and make me.”
The album opens and closes with odes to youth. There’s a ghostly Imogen Heap-like feel to the acapella intro track “Young”. The same energy pulses through the ruminative finale, “Kids Again”, written with Ryan Tedder, Alexandra Tamposi, Andrew Watt and Louis Bell in Los Angeles.
The album title track “Love Goes”, was born from a session with Labrinth, Sam imagines the song as a duet between a lover and their ex. It’s an understanding one, written with the clarity time can give us. They meet, sound out their grievances and reach a conclusion that “we’re both as bad as each other”. That, Sam, has realised, is just the fate of the universe, that’s how love goes.
To be both free and self-critical, feeling everything fully, is the eternal paradox of Sam Smith. Six years in music has shown us that, but on “Love Goes”, they find a playful, sweet spot – one that celebrates dancing with tears in your eyes, and turns inward when it needs to most, “when I get in the studio, it becomes a sanctuary where I can be raw, and I’m okay with that.”
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