Review: Sam Smith – Stay With Me (Pop)

By Drew Wilson

This review covers the pop track Sam Smith – Stay With Me.

This track was released in 2013 on the album In the Lonely Hour.

This track seems to aim to be a depressing song about being left behind and being sad about it.

Unfortunately, there’s plenty of problematic elements I found in this track. For one, the vocalist mumbles some of the lyrics. I’m thinking the idea was that it would better portray raw emotion, but, unfortunately, it just makes the messages sung in this track harder to understand. A second thing I found problematic about this track is that the vocalist unexpectedly hits a number of high notes. Unfortunately, this sort of wrecks the overall audio flow of the track. If the background instruments did something that would signal hitting the high notes, it might not have been so bad, but the end result is still some sort of quality speed bumps along the way. A third thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was that some of the sound was over-used. It’s been done a million times and is therefore adding a layer of boredom to this track.

Positively speaking, I thought that there was some brief level of enjoyment in this tracks chorus when there was a sort of gospel choir backing the vocalist. Unfortunately, these kinds of moments were rather fleeting and make up such a small portion of this track.

In the end, I found little special in this track. That haves me wanting to leave this for a better and more audible track out there. Does little for me.

Score
3.5/10

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85