A stint at the BRIT school studying musical theatre and, later, East London Arts & Music studying music instilled Smith with “hustle and drive”, a conviction to make things happen for herself; it was not long before she began booking any gig she could find. A southbank music festival? Sure. Lambeth Country Show at Brockwell Park? Smith was there – even if no one was in the audience. She found it gave her a buzz “just to live a little – all of that was so quick.”
Community is vital to Smith, an aspect of her growing whirlwind that brings her back to herself. This evening, for example, she is going bowling with friends – an opportunity to reclaim some time for herself after a busy day shooting and being grilled for this feature. Her friends make an appearance in the video for “Personal” because Smith feels “like it’s hard to create that sort of vibe with strangers.”
The acceleration of her momentum is documented between music videos: her debut, “Give Up The Fear” has Smith cycling through the night in black and white; meanwhile, “Personal” sees her level up, cruising around in a vintage convertible during the London summertime. Being in motion helps take the self-conscious pressure away, especially when it comes to expressing herself (“It’s going to be on YouTube forever”, after all) and it is clear that Smith finds it as hard to be static as she finds it necessary to cultivate the need to plough forwards in her career.
The sentiment anchors “Give Up The Fear”, a debut at striking odds with its follow-up single, “Personal”. A vulnerable piece of vintage R&B tinged with soul, the track’s brushed drums and lamentable keys give room for Smith’s incomparable bassy vocal to breathe. “The pain won’t stop until you give it up. Your heart is blocked until you give it up,” she intones. “I don’t wanna live like that.” For a first outing it is remarkably ruminatory, and Smith saw it more as an artistic statement than a play at the numbers game.
“It was the best introduction because of what it was about – giving up fear, letting go, and just creating the stuff you want to create,” she explains. “It was all about my high standards, overthinking everything I was making. I’m a crazy overthinker.” Smith recalls watching her ten-year-old brother create books and drawings for the fun of it and doing the same at his age. Now, with social media, the temptation to compare is always there, and fearless creativity becomes lost as the years tick by. “I had all this weight on my shoulders about how to write a song, which I’ve been doing all this time; why am I now thinking about it so deeply? It was about the pain of that, and letting it go.”
For all her bravado, Smith is not without a thread of self-doubt, and despite such achievements this propensity for perfectionist tendencies and high expectations of self meant her confidence ebbed and flowed. She had ideas of being a “teenage popstar” in part due to the success of artists like Billie Eilish, thinking “if I’m not a teenager when I’m doing this, I’ve failed; now, she realises “it’s really not that deep. When I turned 20, I was like ‘my teenage popstar dream is over’ – but it hadn’t even started yet. As long as I’m making music, I’m happy.”
However, such dreams were abruptly thrown into trepidation when Smith lost her voice last November. Two months later, it still hadn’t returned, and a consultation quickly informed her she was in need of surgery. It was a scary reinforcement that the gifts that let her pursue lofty dreams carried the risk of being finite. “My single [was] supposed to drop in a couple of weeks. I’d just moved out, so was living alone. All this change is happening. I learned some lessons from it.
“At the end of the day, we’re not built to sing,” Smith continues. “If I want to still sing when I’m 30, I’ve got to look after it now.” Back then she says she would “YOLO life – go out, scream, have fun with my friends;” now, she warms up and cools down, a drink and a late night is rare, as well as oily food. “Life’s more boring now ‘cause I think about everything; it’s just a part of a regime. It’s quite long and tedious.”
Whether it be grand or incremental, Smith’s eyes have always been set on the end goal, the bigger picture, but a sense of balance is also important. From “Give Up The Fear” to “Personal”, the progression from childhood to adulthood – and easing into one’s sense of self – is bolstered by finding your community, a chosen family. Currently, she is acknowledging the need to prioritise experiences, and living to fuel the work. “I have my current crew that I work with; some of them are taking breaks to live life, which I need to do as well. You can’t write if you’re not pouring from anything”.
