Pray

This soul-infused gospel ballad features Timbaland on production duties, and comes complete with a full-fledged, choir backing. Maybe I'll pray, pray Maybe I'll pray I have never believed in you, no But I'm gonna pray As a teenager, Sam Smith attended St. Mary's Catholic School in Bishop's Stortford. Though he admits on "Pray" to having turned his back on the Christian faith, it seems he has not forgotten the lessons he learned at the religious educational establishment.

The song was prompted by time spent in Iraq with the charity War Child. Smith told Billboard: "I spent five days in Mosul and came back ­embarrassed that I had known so little about the world and other people's lives. I went back to that great Nina Simone quote, that it is important to speak about the times you live in. I hadn't done that; I'd just written a bunch of songs about love. So I wanted to write about how I'm now starting to open my eyes, at 25, to what is going on in the rest of the world, and that it's not always pretty."

Smith performed this as the Grammy Awards in 2018.