Sam Smith - Gloria

All they have to do is lean harder into progressive dance music. “Lose You” carries the torch of Love Goes (Deluxe) bonus track’s best, it just severely needed a middle eight. While “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” is barely serviceable in its monotonous repetition of the title. Moreover “Gimme” was evidently dead on arrival. With that said they’re still atop the heap of balladry.

They were on a roll with Dancing With A Stranger, Diamonds, How Do You Sleep? and To Die For. Even Kids Again was serviceable.

The songs for Gloria just don't match up apart from Lose You.
 
Huge disaster in the UK with barely 14K, really having a big viral tiktok hit like Unholy really doesn't help with album sales.
 
Their sales are reflective of the audience completely abandoning them, which was to be expected. Established acts are still raking in a decent first week (and actually besting their first week sales of albums they released prior) thanks to the current popularity of vinyl and other physical formats. It seems they are stuck between a rock and hard place between being "too much" for the adult contemporary market but the music being too watered down and bland enough for the gays to fully run out and buy the vinyl.

It's kind of a gag that a Charli XCX album outsold Sam Smith in both the UK and US in 2022/23 nn.
 
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