Sam Smith - Stay With Me

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Sam Smith is a Grammy and Oscar-winning singer and songwriter from London, England.

Their first album, In the Lonely Hour, came out in 2014.

It went quintuple platinum in the US.

And the biggest hit from that album is the song Stay With Me, which has over 2 billion streams on Spotify alone.

For this episode, in honor of the song's 10th anniversary, I talked to Sam about how Stay With Me was made.

I also talked to Sam's frequent collaborator, Jimmy Napes, who is an award-winning producer and songwriter as well.

The two of them tell the story of how the song began and how it turned into the hit that it became.

And then, years later, how it changed again.

My name is Sam Smith.

Before writing this song, I was working in a bar for about two, three years post-leaving school, trying to make money and trying to pay my rent in London.

Singing and performing was something I always loved.

But at that time, I remember being in my flat and I made a pact with myself.

And I said said to myself, if I don't make it in the next year, I'm going to leave London and I'm going to travel around the world because I was to the point where I was so tired of hustling to be a singer.

And so, yeah, I gave myself one year and I

just by chance met Jimmy Napes, who also wrote this song with me in 2012.

I'm Jimmy Napes.

I'm a songwriter and producer.

I met Jimmy because I had a manager called Elvin Smith.

I was working in the bar and Elvin took me to go and sing for Jimmy in his studio in London, almost as an audition.

And I sat down at the piano and I played and I sang for Jimmy.

When I heard Sam sing, it was instantly obvious to me that Sam was going to be a superstar.

Even though they were working in a bar at the time, I'd never heard a voice like it.

And so he started to want to write with me after my work shift.

So I'd go my lunch break or I'd go after the bar and we wrote non-stop.

The first day we ever wrote a song together, we wrote a song which was Lay Me Down, which was an amazing start for us.

Lay Me Down would go on to become the first single from Sam's debut album.

It hit the top 10 on the Billboard charts.

And then I met Disclosure, the dance duo.

Disclosure heard the song Lay Me Down and loved Sam's voice and loved the song.

And we went down, myself and Sam, to where the boys lived and we wrote Latch.

The song reached number 10 in the charts in the UK.

I had been working really hard, but not having any luck or any hits, is the hard truth of it.

So it was kind of unbelievable.

You know, these moments were in the space of a few weeks of each other.

And we'd written Lay Me Down and Latch in our first couple of writing sessions, which went on to change all of our lives.

And I got a record deal, so I was able to leave my day job.

And then I was being,

you know, sent to so many different writers.

It was like speed dating.

The label was starting to put Sam with a lot of different co-writers and producers and people that were far more established than myself at the time.

Jimmy didn't have any hits under his belt other than latch and the label stupidly weren't listening to the music we were making but i just knew sam and i had this connection there was magic being made with me and jimmy and thank god we listened to that in the end

so the day that we started writing stay with me i think i was a little bit hungover because i've been going out at that time trying to find a boyfriend and i i went to the studio with jimmy but also with an artist called tourist my good mate will goes by the name tourist

It was a risky day, I remember, because Taurist was an incredible dance producer, but I'd been working with real pop writers.

And so me, Jimmy, and Taurist all together, no one knew what was going to come of it.

I'd been doing constant writing sessions and some incredible music had been made, but we were missing something anthemic.

We were missing the song.

The pressure of the hit is a mad thing.

So I walked into the studio with a mission for sure, but I think the mission was overridden by the story I needed to tell that day.

Will was by the piano and he was just playing around with chords, and then he hit those first three chords.

I just stood up and I said, stop.

I told everyone to stop because they made me want to cry.

They just spoke to me.

The chords to stay with me are so simple, but they instantly felt really classic and special.

I was working with so many musicians that were, you know,

showing me all these complex chords and playing all this complex music.

But those three chords, they just sounded honest.

Do you know what it is?

It's the space.

There's space.

My head was busy, and

the space left room for me to speak my mind.

Normally, I'm playing the piano when I write, but because Will's such a great pianist and he was there that day, I had to find another place to be.

So I sat myself on the drum kit and just played that really simple beat.

Jimmy's not a drummer.

Definitely not a good drummer.

But that also by the way makes him one of the most amazing drummers actually.

Only Jimmy can drum in the way that he drums.

It just gave it that feeling and that head noddy movement that we wrote to in the room, you know, so I've wrote from the drum kit, which I've never done before or since.

It just shows that writing writing music, you don't have to be the most incredible piano player, or the most incredible singer, or the most incredible drummer.

You just need to feel.

And Jimmy could feel it.

I remember he started playing the drums, and he actually put his arms up in the air and started singing.

He started with an A sound.

It was like, ah, with me, but he didn't say stay.

But it just felt big.

I remember watching, I remember sitting there watching him do that, and I felt like I was in a stadium that's when the lyric stay with me came

stay

with me

as soon as we had those words i immediately knew what i wanted i was 21 years old i was gay

and never had a boyfriend and was so desperate to experience love and to experience a relationship and I was going out so much and the queer scene in London that I was going out in was aggressive and cold at times.

I was surrounded by drugs and sex, and I really just wanted a boyfriend so bad.

And people wanted to sleep with me, but people left it at that.

So I just felt very, very isolated.

And I felt late to the party.

And I think when you feel late to the party, when you haven't experienced love, you start to think, what's wrong with me?

So when I heard those three chords, it put me into that feeling of loneliness

guess it's true i'm not good at a one night stand

but i still need love cause i'm just a man

i knew that i wanted this to be about a one-night stand i knew i i wanted it to be about that feeling when you wake up in the morning with a one-night stand and just wishing that they would stay and want to stay and want to come back and want to be with me and and

that feeling is so desperately sad because they leave and i wanted to capture that

these nights never seem to go to band

i don't want you to leave while you hold my hand

my voice sounds so different it's crazy when i started singing that i was I was a fresh fish.

I'd been singing for a while, but my chords were all like beautiful and pink and just like vibrating so perfectly.

Now my cords are battered.

Why am I so emotional?

No, it's not a good look and some self-control.

Sometimes the most beautiful poetry is just how you'd honestly say something, and so I didn't want to sound clever just for the sake of sounding clever, I wanted to sound honest.

Deep down, I know this never works,

but you can lay with me so it doesn't hurt.

Oh, won't you stay with

me?

Cause you're all

I need.

This ain't love, it's clear to see.

But darling, stay

with me.

But the chorus if I'm honest was missing something and what I realized it was missing was a choir But we didn't have a choir.

We didn't have enough money to get a choir So I was like well, it's just us but let's try and make this feel like a real chorus.

It was just me and Jimmy and we worked overtime that night.

I started recording Sam in different parts of the room and the mic stayed in the exact same position.

But what's cool about that is as Sam moved around the room, you get a special effect like it is a choir.

Essentially, it's as if there are many, many Sams in the room.

And we built this sound up.

Stay with me.

Just layering them up over and over again.

I'd actually like pretend to be different people.

I'd like pretend to be like really low.

Because my range back then was a lot.

bigger so I just stretched my voice as hard as I could.

I remember being being so sure of myself doing it, even though I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

And then when I finished, I stood in the live room and we played it back with the lead vocal over the top.

Stay with me,

cause you're all

I need.

This ain't love, it's clear to see.

But darling, stay

with me

when we played it back.

I just had goosebumps.

And I spoke on the talk back.

I said, oh, Sam, that was amazing.

Like, can we get one more, one more take?

And

Sam didn't answer.

I didn't let Jimmy see me.

I had my back to him.

And I was like, are you okay?

And I went, I just like left the computer and went in the other room and Sam was crying.

But I just burst into tears because that sound that we created, it was the sound of the feeling that I was trying to express.

They could hear it all come together and it was just emotional like in real time.

Sounds mad, but I felt close in that moment to something bigger than me.

It's the only way to explain it.

That was the moment the song changed.

The process of getting the record finished was an amazing one.

So we went to

Rack studios to join together with incredible musicians.

We tried lots of things.

So that's our drums and Jodi's bass.

And then we were playing around with the organ.

I think the organ creates an atmosphere.

It's like a holy hum.

I grew up in Catholic school and I was singing in choirs since I was a child.

There's certain instruments and sounds that can just put you into a state of meditation.

The label wanted us to write a bridge and it didn't feel right.

I said everything I needed to say.

It's very simple.

I'm asking someone to stay with me.

And so I just knew that this was a time for, you know, my make-believe audience to put their hands in the air and just sing.

Simon Hale is a great, dear friend of mine, and he composes all of my string parts.

He did a beautiful string arrangement, which we use very sparsely.

It only comes in at the very end, but it just takes it up another notch.

That was the first time I ever heard an orchestra being recorded onto my music.

And oh my god, what a joy.

What a surreal moment.

It was unbelievable.

Maybe Stay With Me was my siren song because after I released that, I got boyfriends and guys did stay.

I experienced love almost immediately, really, after writing that song.

And I think that I had to get that off my chest a little bit.

And I think by being vulnerable from standing up and saying, I'm lonely as fuck and I need someone and I want to feel that, I think I called

love to me.

And I come to that song now as someone who knows what love feels like.

So that song really healed me, honestly.

But I've always been a non-binary person and I just recently found the right language to express who I am.

And the second line in Stay With Me says, because I'm just a man.

And how does that line sit with you today?

It was a really hard one.

I was on tour whilst I was changing my pronouns and all throughout my transition, coming to terms with who I was and singing that lyric every night.

And my friend Simon Aldred, who's an amazing songwriter, said to me, you wrote that song when you were 21 and it's a moment in time.

Just leave it as that.

But the truth of the matter is when it comes to that lyric, it's just the word man.

The word man is triggering to me now because it's not how I feel.

So I start to not relate to the song as much.

And I didn't want that distance with stay with me.

Sam called me actually, which was very respectful and just said, would I mind if they changed it when they perform live?

And I said, no, absolutely not.

Go for it.

You've got to love what you sing and and

you know it's got to be true to you at first I think it was quite a daunting idea to think about me changing a lyric in that specific song but basically I went to sing at the White House for this incredible moment for the queer community

This was in December 2022, on the day the Respect for Marriage Act was signed into law.

And they asked me to sing Stay With Me.

It felt wrong to stand in that moment and say the word man.

And so on that day I changed the lyrics to baby understand,

which is not the most amazing.

I've rattled my brain about what to say for years and years and years, but it's the closest thing that I can get to the same feeling as the original lyric.

baby.

Understand

these things never seem to go to plan.

That I don't want you to leave, you hold my hand.

And so, ever since the performance at the White House, I've never sang the word man again.

I promised myself in that moment that that was the turning point, and I would never return to that lyric.

And I feel so much better about it.

you know I think that's the beauty in songwriting is that it could actually evolve with you it's just so personal and it should always be personal

but darling

stay

with

me

Coming up you'll hear how all these ideas and elements came together in the final song.

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This episode is brought to you by the new film Splitsville.

It's a comedy about relationships and the messiness that comes with them.

And it stars Dakota Johnson and Adria Arhona.

It premiered at Cann, where it got rave reviews, and it's distributed by Neon.

And for me, that's huge because I trust Neon the way that I trust my favorite record labels.

I will definitely check out anything that they put their name on.

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Splitsville is already playing now in select theaters, and it'll be playing everywhere on September 5th.

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And now, here's the updated version of Stay With Me by Sam Smith in its entirety.

Guess it's true, I'm not good at a wonderstand

But I still need love, baby, understand

These nights never seem to go to plan

I don't want you to leave while you hold my hand

Oh, won't you stay

with me

you're all

I need

This ain't love, it's clear to see

But darling, stay

with me

Why am I so emotional?

No, it's not a good look and some self-control

And deep down I know this never works.

But you can lay with me so it doesn't hurt.

Oh, won't you stay

with me?

Cause you're all

I need.

This ain't love, it's clear to see.

But darling, stay

with me.

Oh, won't you stay with me?

Cause you're all

I need

This ain't love it's clear to see

But darling, stay

with me

Oh, won't you stay

with me

Cause you're all

I need

This ain't love it's

To learn more, visit songexploder.net.

You'll find links to buy or stream Stay With Me, and you can watch the music video.

You can also watch the video of Sam's performance of the song at the White House.

This episode was produced by Craig Ely, Theo Balcombe, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself.

Our production assistant is Tiger Lily Biscup.

The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts.

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I'm Rishikesh Hiraway.

Thanks for listening.

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