"Unholy" by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras, Friday, April 14, 2023 (updated repost)

 

Between cleaning up at the 2015 Grammy Awards for In the Lonely Hour and 2020's Love Goes, Sam Smith's music lost momentum with listeners. Of course, a lot has happened to the singer since then. In 2015, Smith was an openly gay Grammy-winning artist. In 2019, the singer came out as non-binary, telling the BBC, "I do think like a woman sometimes, in my head. Sometimes I've questioned, 'Do I want a sex change?'" Since coming out as non-binary, the singer has embraced both the masculine and the feminine in their videos, concerts, and album promotions. Not only did the singer's sexuality evolve, but also their musical versatility, from a gospel-inspired second record (The Thrill of It All), a Bond theme ("Writing's on the Wall"), featured in a Calvin Harris track ("Promises"), a dance-pop record in 2020--nothing seemed beyond the scope of the singer, though never they quite matching the success of In the Lonely Hour.

MUMMY DON'T KNOW DADDY'S GETTING HOT AT THE BODY SHOP. "Unholy" was the lead single from Sam Smith's fourth record, Gloria. It's a shocking song and video that made our friends over at PluggedIn call it "next-level vile." Writing about the song before the context of the music video, and taking the lyrics of the song quite literally as a "celebratory tone used to praise a man for lying to his wife, ignoring his children and visiting a prostitute whenever he so pleases," the critic Kristin Smith lambastes the song. And even though Smith correctly points out the song's literal message, something else is going on. But because our dear friends at Focus on the Family didn't have the video at the time of the review, let's start there. The video (see below) is truly an avant-garde statement complete with an introduction, elaborate costumes, and a Cabaret-styled dance sequence. The Body Shop scenes--a dinner-theater-styled club where the patrons like scarabs under a rock gather to watch an uncommon burlesque show--aren't too graphic to be censored on YouTube, but the viewers certainly get the idea about what is happening at this club, which is MC'ed by Smith. Famed Italian-Canadian music video and film director Floria Sigismondi directed "Unholy." She has directed videos for Marylin Manson, The White Stripes, Katy Perry, and other artists as well as directing episodes of The Handmaiden's Tale and American Gods. 

DIRTY, DIRTY BOY. The experience for the viewer entering "The Body Shop" is not unlike watching two newlyweds whose car has broken down in front of a Victorian mansion in the 1973 cult classic musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Tim Curry as the "Sweet Transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania" beckons Brad and Janet: "Give yourself over to absolute pleasure." While The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still shocking today to the Focus on the Family types and even caused my parents to mutter about Tim Curry when my sisters and I watched Muppet Treasure Island and later  Clue. But even some conservative types can see the artistic merit of doing the "Time Warp." Fast forward to 2022 and 2023 when Smith and Kim Petras performed the song at the Grammy's, we can ask the question about the artistic merit of "Unholy" and whether or not it meets its goals to promote a conversation. I can think of several merits, though I'm not sure that these are intentional statements. Both statements have to deal with sexuality and sexual/gender identity. In some ways, the video is styled like a sexy hip-hop video--singer Kim Petras acting as the featured singer. Smith is not rapping, but the lines feel like rapping. The video subverts the homo- and transphobia in hip-hop's past. The video features dancers who are trans, non-binary, and sis-gendered, showing the spectrum that gender can display. And that's the first point I think the video is making: that gender fluidity is shocking to many these days, but it's ultimately something we have to come to understand. Drag and alternative gender expressions were once kept in very specific spaces--"The Body Shop," for example, where people go to have a good time whether or not they are hiding their true identity from the world or even their spouses. Now alternative gender expressions are hitting mainstream culture--even among straight-cis-identifying men like Timothée Chalamet wearing a red dress to the film premiere of Bones and All and Harry Styles wearing a blouse.  Trans and non-binary people are becoming more visible, and it's creating a backlash among the vocal Evangelical few. The second point I make is the right to exist. In a democratic society, why should the rights of one religion be valued above the rights of other religions and non-religious folks? Pride parades were designed to shock onlookers, to show everyone that the LGBTQ+ community exists and that in a free society, people shouldn't have to apologize for their existence. When I first wrote about this song, I pointed out that the possibly intended point that the song makes is the hypocrisy of a man having an affair at a sex club and how many repressed conservative Evangelicals and politicians fall into this trap. However, no matter how the so-called "Gay Agenda" is packaged, even if it is as innocuous as a monogamous, churchgoing lesbian couple in a small town on a primetime show, Evangelicals are hell-bound to push their agenda for a closeted to a conversion camp existence for anyone outside of the bounds of a monogamous opposite-sexed marriage. Many in the LGBTQ+ community grew up around this religion. They were told that if they embraced themselves fully, they would go to hell. This has scared many for generations into the closet, into unfulfilling lives. What's the other choice, but to be "Unholy"?

lyric video:

music video: 

Read “Unholy” by Sam Smith & Kim Petras on Genius.