Sam Smith has helped many a fan get through heartbreak and loneliness with his showstopping voice, but the ever-introspective singer recently admitted that he may just be in need of some breakup tunes of his own.
The British singer finally broke the silence surrounding his split from 13 Reasons Why’s Brandon Flynn in a recent interview with UK’s The Times, telling the publication that he’s still processing their nine-month-long relationship.
“I’m still trying to figure out what I took from that relationship and what it meant to me,” the 26-year-old said. “It’s still quite raw.”
Not that he and Flynn, 24, are on bad terms now. “All my relationships have ended in a nice way, never nasty,” he said, calling Flynn a “wonderful” person. Smith declined to speak further on the topic, though he did note that he was always happy to help bring more visibility to LGBTQ couples.
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“Seeing gay relationships [in the public eye] is important and refreshing,” he said. “You don’t see it loads.”
Fans of both Smith and Flynn began to suspect that the usually loved-up couple had split as early as this past June, when Smith quietly deleted all photos of Flynn from his Instagram page and then unfollowed him. Flynn also unfollowed his ex, but opted to keep images of Smith on his page, including one particularly sweet post naming Smith as one of his “favorite things” of 2017.
Also in June, Smith cryptically told concertgoers that he was “going through some shit.” He purged his Instagram account of all mentions of Flynn shortly after that.
The pair were first linked back in October 2017 after photos surfaced of them holding hands and kissing passionately in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Smith later joked about the viral photos, which showed him and Flynn kissing intensely to the point where Flynn, he said, “looks like Ursula sucking the voice out of Ariel.”
“It was a joke. As a joke, we were attacking each other,” he said during a March chat with the UK’s Radio 1. “We were just waiting outside the shop while my sister got cigarettes. I was just joking. I was literally licking his eyeballs. It’s horrendous. I’m going to have to do something crazy to top it.”
Flynn and Smith have been vocal advocates for the LGBTQ community, both together and independently of one another, since coming out. In September 2017, Flynn wrote an impassioned post to Instagram in response to an anti same-sex marriage message in Australia, including himself in the “we” as part of the LGBTQ community.
Smith came out publicly in 2014, and has been vocal about how his sexuality and his relationship to it has helped him to evolve as both a person and a musician.
“I feel like I have become a gay man in the last three years,” he told NPR in a November 2017 interview, early on in his relationship with Flynn. “Now I’ve been to so many amazing gay bars around the world, and met some amazing friends. I just feel more comfortable and confident with who I am.”