"How Do You Sleep?" by Sam Smith, Friday, July 2, 2021

Musicians sometimes have to change something about their projects in response to world events. Squad 5-0 released an album called Bombs Over Broadway which showed WWII jets flying over New York City. Bombs unfortunately coincided 9-11, so the record label changed the cover of the album and the band didn't play the song live at first. Jimmy Eat World's hit album Bleed American was changed to Jimmy Eat World also following the 9-11 attacks. CCM singer Plumb changed her 2013 album from Faster Than a Bullet to Need You Now, in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. And in response to the 2020 Pandemic, Sam Smith retitled their upcoming album To Die For to Love Goes. Not only did Sam Smith retitle the album, but also they restructured it. The pre-released singles, "Dancing with a Stranger," "How Do You Sleep," and "To Die For" would all be tacked on at the end of the album. 

HOW DO YOU SLEEP WHEN YOU LIE TO ME. Sam Smith's third album delves into much poppier material, even sounding upbeat when the lyrics are sad. The music video for "How Do You Sleep?" is a little awkward, seeing the normally melancholy singer dancing with shirtless men in the background, as if it's 1999. With songs inspired by the singer's break up with Brandon Flynn in 2018, Smith no longer writes pining about being incapable of loving or being loved. Love Goes, is a break up record on the opposite side of pain, looking to move forward. Listeners, however, seem to prefer a hopelessly dark romantic Sam Smith. It seems that In the Lonely Hour was Smith's peak, with Love Goes performing the worst of the singer's three albums. Perhaps if it wasn't for the pandemic and the diminishing of the three singles released long before the reworked album, Smith's concept would have boded better with audiences. 

I'M DONE CRYIN' MYSELF AWAKE. There came a point in 2014 after a conflict with my boss, who I had confronted about going against company procedures and he pleaded with me not to tell corporate that I realized that the company was all about money, not ideals. Realizing that fully was liberating. It made me realize that I could take care of me. It was when I started to check out. It was when I started looking for an out. I had invested too much of myself into my job and for what? Working in a Christian school that relied on student tuition and teachers' sacrifice to keep the lights on was too much pressure and too much work. I lost myself in the futility of the long days from 6 am to 10 pm, Monday through Sabbath and a couple of Sundays a year. Thinking back on the time, starting from Adventist college to the "mission field," 2008-2014, I think of my cult years. I sunk into my religious roots, hoping to be that kind of edgy one who drank coffee and listened to cool secular music, read existentialist novels, and watched Tarantino and Nolen, yet believed in the the central truths of the Bible, would make me an effective messenger of Christ. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the proverbial van, stuck on a journey without any coffee or a book or music, and everyone else was speaking a different language.  I saw myself as cargo, not a person. I was a novelty to bait potential students. And I became less and less okay with that.

Read the lyric on Genius.