The third single from In the Lonely Hour, this was played for the first time during the March 25, 2014 episode of Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show at 7:30 p.m. The song was released to iTunes on May 18th alongside remixes from Darkchild, FX and Wilfred Giroux.
In the Lonely Hour finds Smith tackling his unsuccessful love life. This track finds him singing about a person he fell for one night, but who doesn't return the same sentiment. He told Rolling Stone: "I deal with all the different aspects of loneliness." Smith later admitted that the person he is singing about throughout this song and much of the In the Lonely Hour album is a man. He waited to come out as gay because he didn't want it to influence how listeners perceived his music. To his relief, there was very little reaction to his admission - it simply didn't matter to most people.
Smith wrote this with James Napier and William Phillips. "The song just flowed out of us so naturally," Smith told NME, adding that it only took about 30 - 40 minutes to write. Napier, also known as Jimmy Napes, co-wrote the Clean Bandit song "Rather Be" and the Naughty Boy tune "La La La," which features Smith. Phillips is better known as "Tourist," a popular DJ/producer from Brighton. His EP Patterns was released in 2014.
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