Money On My Mind

This post is from my previous endevour (all the way back in 2021), the Substack Heir Raising, where I looked at privilege in British media.

When I tell friends I’m writing about nepotism they’re excited. Most people I know come from ordinary backgrounds: normal schools, working parents, the usual struggles. We work in ‘creative’ industries where we’re outnumbered by people with immense privilege. We both take part in and complain about cancel culture. Shaming people whose lives are successful because of unfair advantage feels righteous. 

When I tell my friends the first newsletter will be about Sam Smith the excitement dies out. 

There’s no hate in my heart for them. Sam seems well intentioned and a hard worker. Their music is absolutely fine, at a push ‘really adequate’. Their entire fanbase is, I imagine, made up of kind aunties who haven’t yet found ‘the one’. Their mistakes seem rooted in the turbulence of youth when you think you know everything. In the deep well of earnestness that is a 20 something’s soul.

I’m really sorry if I say the wrong things… I don’t want to offend anyone and my intentions are genuinely pure and good

Even things that might make them stand out are stripped of power. Sure Sam is queer and non-binary but (in the words of Rich Juzwiak) ‘not like those terrifying spermwhores who love sex sooooo much and will eat your children because they think it strengthens their boners’. In fact when Smith’s first album launched they wanted to be seen as ‘not Sam Smith the gay singer… [but] Sam Smith the singer who happens to be gay’. 

This commitment to standing in the middle of the road isn’t an accident. I can absolutely believe Sam is, as many people have told me: so polite, such a sweetie, very young, and trying their best. The problem is, as my primary school teacher Mr Jones used to remind us, nice means nothing and Sam Smith is very nice. A blank space where a person could be. They’re just like you, whoever you are. 

Sam grew up in a pink cottage with their loving parents and two younger sisters. Dad was a fruit and veg seller turned stay-at-home parent, Mum worked in a bank. Sam’s parents were a driving force in their life with Dad Fred picking them up after school to scurry between theatre rehearsals, recording studios, and singing lessons. It all seemed to be paying off when at the age of 11 Sam found their first manager.

• Bad Day All Week - one of Sam’s early singles

Yet by the age of 20 Sam was no better off than when they’d started. So while friends set off for uni Sam moved to the bright lights of London. Soon they were working seven days a week in a pub cleaning toilets. As if this wasn’t demoralising enough they walked home after work because they couldn’t afford the tube. Friends had to buy them sandwiches at lunchtime because they were so broke.

The vulnerability Sam is willing to project comes off as bravery because it’s authentic - Taylor Swift

Piecing together Sam’s origin story I’m struck by how open they are. When they talk about loneliness and disappointment I can see myself in their place, working hard for ‘exposure’, walking past night clubs feeling like some kind of Victorian urchin in my crumpled day job clothes. Trudging through an unrewarding life, hoping, wishing that somewhere in the near future magic is waiting, is a tale as old as time.

And magic was waiting for Sam. Some fateful day they met rookie songwriter James Napier, became friends and later collaborators. One lunch break Sam ‘went to the Disclosure boys’ studio... made 'Latch', and that was it...’. After that nothing was the same. That rawness and honesty about how their success was a hard won battle is inspiring. It gives you hope that even a boring, earnest, depressed person can succeed as long as they keep trying.

Smith wants you to believe in that image: “Everything you need is within you… you just need to harness it,” In another interview Sam is even more expansive “Your imagination is a powerful thing— use it, run wild with it. Who knows what will happen,” These are lovely statements. They’d go great on a t-shirt or tote bag. This adorable optimism makes what I’m about to say feel all the meaner.

Their whole story is a lie.

More generously it’s like a pearl: at the centre is a grain of truth and built around it are layers upon layers until that truth is no longer visible. The cottage is real: it’s a Grade II listed building with a sprawling garden and swimming pool. And mummy Kate did start out as a clerk at Barclays. However she soon followed in the footsteps of Sam’s great aunts ‘some of the first-ever female bankers in London’ eventually becoming a bond dealer earning upwards of £500,000 a year. Then in 2009 Kate was sacked with her former employers claiming she misused ‘time and resources to establish her child’s musical career’. Sam is reluctant to discuss this, or their mother’s counterclaim for £1.5 million in damages. “It actually takes away from me… yes my mum and dad had a massive reason to do with [my career] but this is… my passion and my drive,” And they’re right: it does take away from that success because it should. 

We get so hung up on the idea of privilege being movie-like. An overbearing parent swoops in, passes bundles of cash to someone, cutscene, suddenly they’re in a mansion. Those moments are real and deeply unfair. So are stories like Sam’s. There was hard work, disappointing failure, and real talent in Smith’s journey. There was also a mother who made enough money for her partner to stay home and dedicate his life to their child’s pipe dreams. There were managers who must have been enticed to work with young Sam not only by their talent but also the prospect of parents who would do (and probably pay) almost anything to help their kid make it. 

Then there’s the constellation of smaller luxuries being financially comfortable gives you. A home that is structurally sound, which won’t be sold out from under you by a landlord, where there’s enough room for your family to live rather than exist. The knowledge that it’s ok to be a ‘very average’ student because you won’t ever need to try for a scholarship. The freedom of knowing even if this has all been a wild goose chase, you can move home, gather your thoughts, and try something new. 

Whenever people hear my music, they must think, ‘You sad t***!’

Those of you who’ve been paying attention will be wondering: what about Smith cleaning toilets in that pub? Walking home late at night? Not being able to afford a sandwich? And here we encounter more lies. Or half truths. Because by pub Sam meant Harry’s Bar and Dining Room: a small restaurant in London’s financial district where you can have a delicious lunch of chicken and liver parfait (£8.50), followed by grilled sea bream (£22), and wash it all down with some Pouilly Fumé (£46) or Perrier Jouët Belle Epoque Rosé (£275) if you’re celebrating something special (wherein you may want to order a bespoke cake: prices start at £35). Having worked in a shithole of a pub where I regularly watched people hit each other then vomit on the floor, which nevertheless employed a regular cleaner, I find it hard to believe that Harry’s with its private rooms and in-house DJs somehow overlooked this.

Sam worked here seven days a week and rented for only £600 a month, a real steal even a decade ago, so it’s not clear why they appear to have been so broke. It could be that they are absolutely shit with money, spending it all on boozy nights out between shifts or cute shoes and if so I sympathise. It’s important to emphasise that there’s a difference between sometimes wiping a bathroom down and spending all day scrubbing bodily fluids out of tile grout. Both can feel mind-numbingly dull, customers from all walks of life can be truly awful, yet only one pays above minimum wage and allows you to network with fellow musicians. 

In some ways it is unkind to pick at these parts of Smith’s story. It shouldn’t matter whether it was a pub or a bar, if they cleaned toilets now and then as opposed to every day. “Even though I’ve been so lucky and so privileged, it’s still difficult. Life is still hard.” Sam told Zane Lowe last year, from a suite at The Savoy. It’s not about each individual lie, and there are many I’ve cut for time or because they felt petty, it’s about the story they paint. Sam wants us to follow our dreams, realise our fantasies, never lose hope. I want all that for us too. However I know it's not enough.

It is so much easier to make a dream come true when you don’t have to choose whether to buy food or turn the heating on. If as a kid you’re given the space to explore your talents instead of becoming a second mum to your siblings, you’re able to hone those gifts and reach your full potential. Those of us who can’t move home, and don’t have a swimming pool to float languidly in if things don’t work out, have to work harder just to survive. Our triumphant successes often take decade after decade of rejections. If this writing thing never really takes off for me I’m back at the jobcentre looking for minimum wage gigs. If Sam’s career didn’t work out they would ‘have opened up a flower shop in Italy’ despite knowing nothing about flowers, Italy, or shopkeeping.

Even Sam’s lucky break: that prophetic meeting with James Napier, is a product of privilege. Napier, or Jimmy Napes as he prefers to be called, is the son of an Olivier, BAFTA, and Tony award winning theatre designer. In his mid 20s with no chart successes behind him he was already able to afford a recording studio in central London. Napier was free to explore, fail, succeed, and network simply because he was born into a family with a little money to spare. 

You can see it as a chain reaction. If the Smith family hadn’t been comfortably off Sam wouldn’t have had singing lessons. Fred wouldn’t have had the time to chauffeur them around after school to various musical engagements. Without these chances to grow as an artist Sam wouldn’t have met their first manager. This manager leads to the second, third, fourth, so on. Though most weren’t able to lead Smith to fame they encouraged Sam to hold onto that dream. And led eventually to the manager who knew Napier. If Napier and Smith hadn’t had an inside connection to two new music managers looking to make a name for themselves their demos would have languished unread in the inbox. If none of these moments had been reality then you, and I, may never have sat on the floors of our bedrooms crying to Stay With Me.

The image of Sam Smith as a sad loser who can’t stop getting dumped is so effective that even knowing about the immense amount of advantages they had I can’t help feeling cruel as I publicly reveal them. And privilege aside Sam has worked hard. We keep coming back to that: Sam works hard. As if by saying it over and over it erases every bunk up they had, leaving us with just those tear stained recording sessions. That vulnerability, the crying, those raw bleak emotions we’ve all felt, make it so hard to dunk on Sam.

“I actually get really angry [when] people say I come from money, because when I was younger I had money and then I didn't. So I really do know more what it's like to be poor than I know what it's like to be rich." If we’re to believe Sam we need to know what poor means to them. The culture shock of being an isolated but spoilt child with their own swimming pool, to living in London’s poorest borough in a flat share must have felt like torture. But it’s a long way from trying to live on Jobseeker’s Allowance’s £56.25 a week. To Sam who had been promised stardom from a young age working in a bar must have felt demeaning. That literal shit and those extremely real toilets are incontrovertible parts of their story. There absolutely has to be a big ‘but’ when we say these things because feelings are not facts. To grow up completely ignorant as to what poverty is, or entirely clueless of gay culture and history, is a form of fucked up privilege. 

Sam speaks the truth when they say “No one learns about gay history in school. Nothing,” We can all agree how sad this is and how it fucks you up. Then again Sam didn’t grow up under section 28, nor did they come of age before the internet. What Sam seems to want is for someone to bring this knowledge to their lap then spoon it into their mouth. It appears to be their attitude about everything, from crying in the garden of their £12 million 4,600 sq ft house because staying home was hard during lockdown, to claiming they were the first ‘openly gay man’ to win an Oscar. The idea that they might look beyond their own blinkered experiences is novel to Sam, who speaks first and apologises later.

The sheer unadulterated confidence that everything they do is groundbreaking and worthy of unending praise is insulting to just about everyone else in the world. Sam’s humble childhood home life is beyond our adult dreams and means. We’ve learned about our places in society through disadvantages and set-backs we face every fucking day. Selling us the idea that we can all reach success by emulating Smith’s work ethic equally implies that if we don’t make it, we didn’t try hard enough. We didn’t say the right affirmations, make a compelling dream board, aren’t built for success.

Allowing Sam to identify as ordinary and co-opt the struggles of poverty is gross. It allows people who think there’s deserving and undeserving poor to point to Sam’s life and say “See? Anyone can do it,”  Sam repeatedly redefining fame as “like going through a trauma,” mocks anyone who has gone through genuine life altering horrific trauma. Placing themselves in the same category as cleaners, many of whom are paid cash in hand below minimum wage because they can’t work legally, or fear speaking up in case they get fired, is straight up offensive.

It feels to them like every time they open their mouth, they get tased.

I want to say again: there’s no hate in my heart for Sam Smith. I will still sway miserably to their tunes while I wait to pay for my tampons in Boots. I don’t even think Sam (or their team) concocted these stories as some kind of evil plan to hide how privileged Sam truly is. It probably didn’t occur to any of them that their words might have power or influence. Again to be able to say anything that pops into your mind and it not ruin your life is a kind of privilege. Things will always be ok for you no matter what you do. There is no rock bottom to hit. 

Our lives may or may not have been as pampered as Sam’s but we do have one privilege they don’t: the ability to live our lives privately. We get to explore how money comes and goes and the effect it has on us as people and our relationships. We say ridiculous things, get called out, learn, and move on. Holding each other accountable for the tales we tell, and their effects on the people around us is noble. It’s a tiny, achievable, way to be righteous and do good every day. Sam has grown a lot in the last few years. They finally started getting laid with some regularity, read some books, met some gays, bought a house. “I’m still trying to figure [expletive] out and I’d like to be treated like a human.” Part of being the good person, and queer spokesperson, that Sam Smith so clearly wants to be is giving a shit about people not like yourself. Learning from experiences beyond your own. Amplifying the voices of people you used to speak over. Seeing the hurt you’ve done and making it better.

We don’t need Sam Smith to be the perfect, contrite, woke, figurehead for queer rights. This piece isn’t a gotcha where I pull back the curtain to reveal Smith’s dastardly web of lies and cackle with joy. But if they offer honesty, then we need it to be honesty. If they claim they’re learning and evolving, then we need to see that growth. And if they want to simply have a nice, uncomplicated life, revelling in their wealth and comfort then they can do that. But don’t piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining.

Smith’s pronouns are they/them: quotes may have been edited to reflect this.