The British singer, now 34, says they recognized their non-binary identity long before finding the words to describe it. Smith recalled that at 27 they discovered the vocabulary that made sense, and in 2019 they publicly adopted they/them pronouns as another step of coming out.
Reflecting on the success of 2014’s In the Lonely Hour, Smith described the following albums as a period of recovery and self-discovery. They spoke about coping with loud industry pressures, trying to satisfy audiences and suddenly becoming famous at 21.