An outpouring of authentically moving romantic misery, this could have joined the ranks of the all-time great breakup albums – if only the backing music weren’t so stale
As Sam Smith recently tearfully confessed to a New York Times journalist, the songs on his second album were provoked by the collapse of a five-month relationship. On the one hand, this sounds like a pretty sad state of affairs. On the other, you can’t help thinking: ker-ching!
It’s over 60 years since Frank Sinatra poured the misery of his disintegrating marriage to Ava Gardner into In the Wee Small Hours, and the breakup album has been with us ever since. Yet they’ve seldom been so much of a commercial force as in the last decade or so. Everyone from Coldplay to Kanye West seems to have one – Taylor Swift appears to produce nothing but. The two most commercially successful British releases of this century are breakup albums: Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Adele’s 21, the latter such a blockbuster that it spawned a sequel. When it came time to follow up the 30m-selling smash, the now happily married singer simply returned to picking over a failed relationship – presumably the same one that had inspired its predecessor – shifting another 20m albums in the process. You’d have to go back 40 years, to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, to find the multifarious sorrows of the failed relationship selling product in such quantity. Never mind, plenty more fish in the sea, and besides, think of the sales figures.
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