At Home with Sam Smith: The Playlist

Sam Smith didn’t want to take any chances as soon as they started feeling ill when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “I didn’t get tested, but I know I have it, 100 percent have it,” Smith tells Apple Music. “I'm just going to assume that I did, because everything I've read completely pointed to that.” The British singer-songwriter has been taking care while hunkering down with their sister at Smith's North London home. “My sister, five days after me, started getting the same symptoms. So me and her just isolated for three weeks because we knew. Because I've got an older nan, and we didn't want to risk anything.” In Apple Music’s At Home With series, Smith shares they've been blasting Belinda Carlisle while cleaning the house, singing out loud to Robyn, and listening to Laura Marling when the mood calls for calm. They have also been taking advice from Tracy Chapman, whose 1988 track “Mountains O’ Things” offers an opportunity for some much-needed perspective. “It's a reminder that we do not need money to experience beauty and love and to feel those feelings,” they say of the track. “And that's what this whole experience to me has reminded me—that if you got your heart and your family and everyone's healthy, and that's all you need. Nothing else matters.”