Sam Smith’s new ballad marks progress for LGBTQ love songs

Sam Smith released “My Guy” on June 24, 2026 as the lead-in to Hazel Eyes, the artist’s fifth album. Set beside Barry Walters’ history of LGBTQ music, it marks how queer intimacy has moved from the margins toward the center of mainstream release strategy. For much of the period Walters covers, the pattern was not absence but containment: coded language, limited promotion, and love songs that had to fight for space.

From hidden expression to public legitimacy

Barry Walters’ book, Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000, covers a period when many LGBTQ artists and songs were pushed to the edges of popular culture. The book traces major LGBTQ+ songs and artists of the 20th century, which gives the present moment a longer frame than a single or album rollout.

Queer love often had to be encoded, softened, or made legible only to those already looking for it. A mainstream ballad from an openly queer-identified pop star can be presented as a straightforward love song without being reduced to subtext, even if that is not the same thing as full equality in the industry.

What Sam Smith is releasing now

The song arrives as the lead-in to Hazel Eyes, the artist’s fifth album, which was announced alongside the single. The album is set for release on August 21, 2026 and will contain twelve tracks.

Smith presented the project as an artistic milestone. In the announcement, the 34-year-old said, “I have deepened myself as an artist through the making of this album.” The record is presented in the language of growth rather than novelty. Queer love is part of a larger artistic practice with enough breadth to anchor a full album.

Why a mainstream ballad still matters

“My Guy” is not the first queer love song to exist, but it is being launched as a major pop release rather than a niche statement. Walters argues that queer music has historically been sidelined, and that context makes the song’s placement in Smith’s catalog especially telling. A love ballad aimed at mass audiences signals that queer desire can occupy the same emotional and commercial territory long reserved for heterosexual romance.

The barrier used to be whether queer artists could speak openly at all. Now the barrier is subtler: whether a queer love song can be treated as ordinary, or whether it still has to carry the extra burden of representation. “My Guy” suggests the industry is closer to the first answer, but not fully there yet.

The line from “Gloria” to “My Guy”

Smith has been signaling this public emphasis on queer identity for some time. In Rolling Stone, “Gloria” was called a “queer love hymn,” a phrase that captured both the song’s emotional register and its place in Smith’s artistic identity. That earlier framing helps explain why Hazel Eyes is not being heard as an abrupt turn, but as part of an ongoing body of work in which queer love is central rather than incidental.

“My Guy” belongs to a clear narrative thread. Smith has repeatedly used the pop ballad form to claim emotional space for queer intimacy, and ballads have long been one of the most accessible ways popular music translates private feeling into public language.

What has changed, and what has not

Earlier eras often forced LGBTQ musicians and songs into coded expression or kept them outside the mainstream conversation altogether. Smith’s current rollout, by contrast, is expansive: a named single, a title album, a release date, and a 12-track record positioned in the public eye.

A queer love song still gets discussed as a notable cultural event, which shows how much symbolic labor remains attached to representation. Straight romance rarely has to justify its presence in pop; queer romance still often does. That imbalance is the remaining barrier, even after the industry appears more openly accepting.