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Red Alert: Beware of Sam Smith’s hedonistic ‘Gloria’ album

Media Review/Entertainment
By Summer Lane

Photo: Deposit, Editorial Use Only

If you listen to the radio at all, you’ve likely heard one of Sam Smith’s poppy tunes, ranging from “I’m Not the Only One,” to “Too Good at Goodbyes.” His songs have garnered hundreds of millions of plays on Spotify – with some even exceeding a billion plays.

Smith was born in the U.K., launching his career in the early 2010s and achieving success with singles like “Latch” and “Lay Me Down.” In 2014, Smith came out as gay, and in 2017, he came out as genderqueer and nonbinary, and announced that he would be using “they/them” pronouns, via Celebritto.

His music has never been family-friendly or even family-oriented, but he’s worth examining, because his music is very popular. In fact, if you have a child who is in school or hanging out around other kids who are listening to music on Spotify or watching music videos on YouTube, you’re going to want to make sure you’re aware of Smith…and the agenda he’s unashamedly pushing.

Smith’s newest controversy

In the past week, Smith launched his newest album, “Gloria,” which is saturated in thick, syrupy messages about self-indulgence and self-glorification. Smith partnered with Kim Petras to duet on “Unholy,” a melancholy song trumpeting a wandering husband’s clandestine trips to a sex club, while “Gloria” basks in a worship song to the artist himself:

Be yourself so loud tonight (So loud)
They’ll hear you from the stars (And they will hear your voice)
Sparkling like dynamite (Sparkle)
If that is who you are (Is who you are)
A hymn for Gloria (For Gloria)
For Gloria, Gloria
A hymn for Gloria (Gloria)
For Gloria, Gloria (Gloria)
Gloria
Gloria (Gloria)
It’s all but a hymn for Gloria (It’s all a hymn for Glori—Glori—, Gloria)
It’s all but a hymn for Gloria (It’s for Gloria)

All of these lyrics are delivered alongside a church choir, in the style of a hymn. Can you say, sacrilegious? The theme of the entire album is predicated heavily on church music, as a matter of fact – only Smith’s idea of church is dark, sexual, and perversely hedonistic.

Smith also dropped another music video in the last week to accompany another song from the album, “I’m Not Here to Make Friends.” The video has garnered shock from most viewers for its over-the-top sexual content. In the video, Smith embraces a whole new level of gender confusion, stepping out of a helicopter wearing an enormous pink gown, adorned with gold earrings, and walking saucily into a castle beside two “royal” consorts.

Smith dresses in women’s gowns for the entirety of the video, slapping on nipple pasties, rubbing up against bare butts, dancing alongside men dressed in drag, and twirling around in a poorly-fitted corset with a golden thong.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The entire video is so grotesquely crass that even hardcore fans of Smith have been split over the explicit sexual content. According to a report from Fox News, journalist Alex Philips recently stated on ITV’s Good Morning Britain Today that Smith’s video was “unhealthy.”

She said, “I don’t think it is a coincidence that the reporting of things like sexual assaults and sexual attacks, relationships falling apart, the swipe left and swipe right generation. It is bad, it is unhealthy, it is not good for society, and this is a symptom of it.”

Smith has become overwhelmingly obsessed with sexuality, sex, and gender bending. No one can deny that he has an amazing voice, or that his songs are catchy (although many of them are wholly inappropriate for the Christian!). What is disturbing to watch about Smith is that he has become so saturated in the world of gender confusion and sex that he has degraded the value of his own body and the bodies of those in his music videos. He has reduced himself to his sexuality and to the momentary pleasures of materialism.

Smith parrots a narrative that pushes the idea that humans are nothing more than bags of bones with a beating heart, meant to seek out pleasure and self-indulgence as much as possible on our one-way trip to a rapidly approaching grave. He is so consumed with own gender confusion that he has foregone the concept of static gender entirely.

Everything Sam Smith stands for flies in the face of a Biblical worldview. God created Man in His own image, Imago Dei (Genesis 1:27). God created a specific and binary model for gender for His special creation: Male and Female (refer again to Genesis 1:27).

I used the word “hedonistic” earlier in this review, and it really sums up the message that Smith is sending his fans. Hedonism, to be clear, is the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life (according to Merriam-Webster!).

This explains the very slippery slope that Smith has taken. When everything is about pleasure and everything is about self-indulgence, it’s impossible to apply any set of moral standards to your life. The standard becomes, “Whatever makes me happy is what I will do.” The problem with this lifestyle is that there is no objective truth, and what is good and pure and right will be eventually eclipsed by Man’s natural sin nature.

Smith’s video – and his entire album – is a symptom of a sick and sinister society that is losing sight of objectivity in every area, whether it’s entertainment or education. We can see this unfolding when parents gleefully take their innocent children to explicit drag shows. When did this become a regular occurrence in our society?

Without God at the center of our lives, anything is acceptable, because we then begin to live for ourselves and for our sinful desires instead of living for the One who created us and respecting the design that He set in place on Earth.

Romans 1:28-32

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

 

 


The opinions in this article are specific to its author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire Counter Culture Mom team. This specific article was written by Summer Lane, and may not be reproduced, except to quote for reviews or interviews, without the express permission of the author. 

 

 

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Summer Lane is the #1 bestselling author of 30 books, including the hit Collapse Series and Resurrection Series. She is an experienced journalist and columnist who reports on news within the U.S. and abroad. Additionally, she analyzes politics and policies in weekly op/Eds on The Write Revolution.

Summer is also a mom and wife who enjoys rural country living, herding cats, and gardening. She is passionate about writing about women’s issues, parenting, and politics from a theologically-grounded perspective that points readers to the good news of the gospel.

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