In 2022, it would have been nearly impossible to open TikTok and not see somebody dancing along to Sam Smith’s “Unholy.” Teaming up with transgender singer Kim Petras, the artist delivered a chart-topping success. While the song may superficially appear to be a thirst trap, it actually has deep, impactful meanings.
The Story of “Unholy”
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The dance-pop song is in the C♯ Phrygian dominant mode, a key that’s generally used in Arabic music, and features singing reminiscent of Gregorian choirs, giving it an operatic feel. The lyrics, meanwhile, present a main character who goes to what appears to be a body shop but is in reality a strip club. (Fun fact: The Body Shop in Los Angeles is the first all-nude strip club in the U.S.)
The main character is a family man who’s having an affair at the club. As the self-described cynical narrator, Smith details the husband’s two-faced actions as the husband brags to Smith about everything he does. While critical of the husband, the narrator is sympathetic to the wife and judgmentally predicts the affair’s inevitable outcome: “She’d [the wife] kick you out if she ever, ever knew/ ‘Bout all the **** you tell me that you do.”
Petras, meanwhile, plays the other woman. Petras’ character brags about the money she’s making thanks to the husband’s infidelity: “Mmm, daddy, daddy, drop the add’y/ Give me love, give me Fendi, my Balenciaga daddy/ You gon’ need to bag it up, ’cause I’m spending on Rodeo.”
Duality
The theme of duality runs throughout the song and the music video. For example, when the husband goes to what appears to be a standard body shop, Sam Smith and Petras are both working as mechanics; however, the viewer sees them giving each other knowing looks as the man goes to the back of the shop, where a cabaret performance is ongoing. It’s at the cabaret where Smith’s and Petras’s true professions are shown, with Smith as the MC and Petras as the other woman performing along with drag queens.
The music video ends with the man sprawled on top of a car that has words like “cheater” sprayed on it. The wife, who tracked her husband to the club, is revealed to be a performer herself and joins everybody on stage in a Gregorian-style song. The music video shows that nobody is truly as they first seem, as every character has an element of duality to them.
Liberation and Queer Joy
The open-and-shut explanation of the song’s lyrics is that it’s just about Smith detailing the sordid affair of a cheating husband. Despite the seemingly depressing content in the lyrics, though, Smith actually said they never had so much fun making a song like “Unholy” and a record like Gloria, the album it’s on. In an interview with NME, Smith explained that the song is actually about “liberating oneself from the clutches of others’ secrets,” certainly a departure from the ballads that they’re usually known for, such as 2014’s “Stay With Me.”
In another interview with Billboard, Smith explained their thoughts on the impact of “Unholy.” The artist said, “I think joy for me, and for a lot of queer people, is quite a dangerous place. We’re all masters of pain, and I think it’s … courageous to step into the queer joy of it all.” So it seems even with the gloomy content, the song does harbor a sense of joy to it after all.
Conclusion
In the NME interview, Smith described making “Unholy” as one of their most glorious creative moments as an artist. They further described how cathartic and freeing it was to throw out the rulebook by making this record, saying it felt like both their first-ever record and a coming of age. From its instrumentation to its lyrics to its themes, “Unholy” has certainly shown Smith and Petras’s glorious creativity to a wide range of fans.
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