Sam Smith has released “Oh Mother,” a sweeping new power anthem featuring The TwoCity Chorus and the second single from their forthcoming fifth studio album, Hazel Eyes. The album arrives August 21 via Capitol Records and follows Smith’s June single “My Guy,” offering a dramatically different look at the emotional world of the new project.
Where “My Guy” moved with the soft glow of requited love, “Oh Mother” is built around betrayal, fury, protection, and the instinct to seek comfort from someone who once made the world feel safe. Smith places that longing inside a towering arrangement of piano, distorted guitar, hand percussion, cinematic strings, and a 28-member choir whose presence gives the song the scale of both a spiritual and a confrontation.
The TwoCity Chorus does not simply sit behind Smith as decoration. The choir becomes a dramatic force within the song, answering, surrounding, and intensifying the lead vocal as the arrangement steadily grows. Their harmonies represent the rage of a mother witnessing her child’s pain, giving “Oh Mother” an almost mythic quality as private heartbreak expands into something communal.
Additional vocals from Smith’s friend Dante deepen that sense of chosen family. Smith has described Dante as a mothering presence during their twenties, particularly within their experience as a queer person. That detail makes the song’s idea of motherhood broader than biology. “Oh Mother” becomes an expression of the people who protect, guide, witness, and offer strength when someone is struggling to hold themselves together.
The track begins with one of the album’s most arresting lines, “You remind me of my mother’s greatest fear,” immediately placing the listener inside a relationship already shadowed by warning. From there, “Oh Mother” moves less like a conventional ballad than a rising wave. Smith’s vocal remains emotionally controlled even as the music becomes more volatile, creating tension between grief and release.
Smith co-produced “Oh Mother” with David Odlum, known for his work with Glen Hansard and Josh Ritter, and Simon Aldred, whose credits include Avicii and Liam Gallagher. Composer Gabe Noel, who has worked with Sombr and Father John Misty, contributes the song’s cinematic string arrangement. Together, the collaborators shape a sound rooted in live instrumentation rather than the sleek electronic production that defined some of Smith’s recent hits.
That choice appears central to Hazel Eyes. Recorded in spaces including New York City’s Electric Lady Studios, the album was created over three years with a close circle of musicians and arrangers. Smith also worked with Feist, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and string arranger Rob Moose, whose credits include Bon Iver and The National.
The 12-song album is described as a modern fairytale of requited love, but “Oh Mother” suggests that the record will not avoid the fear, memory, and emotional damage that can accompany intimacy. Rather than presenting love as uncomplicated salvation, Smith appears interested in what people carry into relationships, how old wounds resurface, and how tenderness can coexist with distrust.
That emotional complexity also separates “Oh Mother” from “My Guy.” Released alongside the announcement of Hazel Eyes, “My Guy” featured harmonies from Feist and Moses Sumney and presented Smith in a lighter, openly romantic mode. Its direct use of masculine language also gave the song cultural weight without sacrificing warmth or accessibility.
The new album follows Smith’s 2023 record Gloria, which included the global hit “Unholy” with Kim Petras. That single reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Official Singles Chart, but Hazel Eyes appears to move away from its provocative electronic pulse in favor of something more organic, intimate, and theatrical.
Previously released tracks “Love Is a Stillness” and “To Be Free” will also appear on Hazel Eyes. The latter became the namesake of Smith’s ongoing To Be Free residency series, which launched at Brooklyn’s Warsaw and has included surprise appearances by Hozier, Ed Sheeran, Brandi Carlile, SIENNA SPIRO, and Kim Petras.
Smith will continue the residency format in Mexico this August, including a performance at Auditorio Telmex in Guadalajara and four nights at Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional. A UK run follows in September with two shows at Manchester’s Albert Hall and eight performances at the London Coliseum.
The intimate format gives Smith room to connect the songs from Hazel Eyes with the earlier work that made them one of the most commercially successful vocalists of their generation. Across albums including In the Lonely Hour, The Thrill of It All, Love Goes, and Gloria, Smith has amassed more than 57 billion career streams and earned five GRAMMY Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and two Guinness World Records.
“Oh Mother” does not rely on those accomplishments. Its power comes from the vulnerability at its center and the way Smith allows that vulnerability to become enormous without losing its emotional clarity. With the full force of The TwoCity Chorus behind them, Smith turns a plea for maternal comfort into a song about betrayal, queer kinship, divine feminine power, and the voices that carry us when our own strength begins to fail.
Hazel Eyes will be released August 21 through Capitol Records.
Featured image credit: Collier Schorr
