‘Frankly Grotesque’: Internet Reacts To ‘Non-Binary’ Singer Sam Smith’s New Sexually Charged Music Video

By
David Rufful
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OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.

Singer Sam Smith, a 30-year-old U.K. performer, is being criticized for his sexually charged music video.

This video can be viewed by children and is raising concerns.

Smith identifies as “non-binary,” and his video called “I’m Not Here To Make Friends” is on his newly released album “Gloria.”

There are sexual images in the video, like Smith wearing pasties and dancing with back-up dancers who aren’t wearing much.

One Twitter user said, “YouTube does not have any age restrictions on Sam Smith’s sexualized new music video. 5-year-olds can look this up and watch it with no content restrictions!”

“Sam Smith, this is not art. This is not trendy. This is not empowering. This is monstrous.”

Another person tweeted, “Sam Smith is a perfect example of what degenerate Hollywood culture does to people. It makes celebrities rude, overly sexual, and obsessed with putting on their sexuality like a costume and shoving it in everyone’s face. And to make matters worse, kids look up to this man!”

A third user tweeted, “Can I just say I used to love Sam Smith when he made actual music?”

“Since then, he’s become frankly grotesque, cheapened his talent, and turned into a complete joke. Why isn’t somebody close to him telling him he looks terrible?”

Smith said during an interview on CBS Mornings, “I felt this pressure that I put on myself mostly, to do that every time, and I was like, ‘Okay, this is my ’brand,’ you know, I am ‘this’ and then the arts started to suffer because of that.”

He said, “I think that you can’t blame people for thinking something’s not beautiful sometimes. Some people just didn’t like it, but it was a case where I had to sit there and be like, ‘Wait, maybe you don’t like that because you don’t understand it.’”

Smith added, “The music industry is just not used to queer artists.”

“I’ve always been very sexual and very open and loved dancing and moving my body and singing and making songs that allow my body to move in the way that it does in front of people is just so exciting,” he said.