Sam Smith removes “man” from ‘Stay With Me’ lyrics: “Really important to me”
July 11, 2024Singer-songwriter and previous Out100 honoree Sam Smith is marking the 10th anniversary of their debut album ‘In the Lonely Hour’ with a fresh vinyl repress.
The Oscar- and Grammy-winning artist informed fans of the reissue via email, also mentioning a change to a lyric in their first solo hit, 2014’s ‘Stay With Me.’
The original song starts with, “Guess it's true, I'm not good at a one-night stand/But I still need love 'cause I'm just a man.”
Smith, who announced their nonbinary identity in 2019, revealed, according to ‘Out’, they altered the lyric in the new version to, “but I still need love, baby understand.”
“This song is truly so special to me, so for the 10 year anniversary I re-recorded the track, which will be available on all platforms & physical,” the announcement states. “Including the updated lyric ‘but I still need love, baby understand’ which felt really important to me.”
Image Credit: Canva
Smith then shared a story about the song’s creation.
“When me, Jimmy and Tourist wrote this song, none of us would’ve expected it to become what it has in the world. I will never forget Will (Tourist) playing those three chords on the piano. I stopped everything I was doing and said ‘what is that’. Those chords and this song still stir me in the same way to this day. I’ve never once got sick of singing it. The meaning of this song changes for me whenever I sing it. The words ‘Stay With Me’ can mean a million different things and follow me throughout my life like an old friend.”
They concluded, “It's beautiful to know that sometimes, we can change the past.”
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