Sam Smith Reveals 'Unholy' Was Almost A Totally Different Song

Sam Smith’s collab with Kim Petras has been a banger hit this season, recently going Platinum and being nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance after topping the Billboard Hot 100 charts last month.

And now Smith is opening up about how the song almost went down a different path.

While appearing on Michelle Visage’s Rule Breakerspodcast recently, Smith spoke about the success of “Unholy,” which they called “a queer Bonnie & Clyde,” and how the writing process for Petras’s verse initially got off track.

“It was such a powerful day. It was a room full of some of the biggest pop writers in the world,” they said. “All straight guys. And me and Kim were there. And her part of the song was starting to go down this road that felt a bit… it just didn’t feel right? It honestly didn’t feel queer. It didn’t feel like us.”

As both artists fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, it was clearly important to them that their collaboration felt authentic to who they are, so something had to change.

“I remember, it was like four or five o’clock in the afternoon. She had been recording for hours. And me and her just had this chat and we were like, ‘No, no, no. We need to scrap everything we’ve done, and rewrite it,’” Smith recalled. “And she went in and it was unbelievable. She basically wrote the entire melody in one take, and then we came in and we worked on the lyrics for her verse. And it was just so fun.”

Clearly, their work paid off, as “Unholy” continues to break new ground and be a smashing success for both artists — and a song we’re happy to have on our playlists.