The Brit-award winning, Grammy nominated singer-songwriter sat down in an interview with Zing Tsjeng for Porter Magazine as she is this months cover star of the magazine.
“I found it embarrassing – I didn’t want people to know I could sing,” Smith recalls her childhood. “My mum told people I could sing and I’d be like, ‘I hate you! Why are you telling people?’” . When she was eight, she wrote the church nativity play and found herself dishing out the role of “camel” to her brother while simultaneously awarding herself the Silent Night solo. “No one turned up,” she said. “None of the kids were there.”
When asked about herself and her body, she remembered a time when she enrolled in a weekend school for performing arts. “I didn’t want to have big lips. I didn’t want to have an ass. It was quite sad. It wasn’t until I moved to London [that] I loved myself more,” she says. “I’ve become a lot more confident within myself and my body. Sometimes I want to put on a tight sexy dress or something hugging because I’m feeling myself… [but] nothing’s changed. I [still] don’t like the attention now,” she laughs. “I guess I’m just more confident – I love performing.”
When asked about the fame, One time, she says, she was crying on a plane, upset after an argument. “The air stewardess could see I was crying.” Instead of being checked in on, Smith was asked for a selfie. “I’m crying,” Smith remembers saying. “Yeah, but my daughter loves you.”
“There’s so much shit people don’t realize, that you don’t know – no one teaches you”, and the crippling perfectionism that makes her second-guess herself. “When I was 15, I remember telling my friend, ‘You look like you because you’re you, and don’t compare yourself to other people,’” she recalls. “But here’s me, not listening to myself at 15.”
She also discussed the state of social injustice worldwide, specifically about the murder of George Floyd. She said that her friends and herself mourned collectively. “Seeing all these videos of Black people getting killed all the time, we don’t want to see it anymore.” As black squares populated her feed, she ended up staring at her phone, debating over whether to post about it. “I don’t know what to say,” she told her dad. “Do what you do,” he told her.
When asked about By Any Means, she said “All this shit happens in our lives. I think we’re just socially aware – and writing about what’s going on and what we want to and what we observe and what we’re passionate about.”
She’s no activist, Smith emphasizes: “I just write about what I believe in and what I think people need to hear. Hopefully, me writing the song has changed their thought process or opened their mind a bit. That’s all I ever wanted to do.”
And as for fame? She rounded up, saying “Celebrating your wins and successes is what I’m moving to,” she determines. “Just celebrate – life’s short.”
She was styled by Natasha Wray in Bogotta Venetta, the photos were shot by Danika Magdalena.
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