This is the title of their upcoming new album, which was revealed during their interview with Jools Holland. The lead single "My Guy" is out this Wednesday.

Nice of them to name their album after my eye colour, no one's done that before

Out August 21. 12 tracks, including "Love Is A Stillness", "To Be Free" and their new single "My Guy".

A heartfelt tribute to the city of New York, which Sam now calls home, Hazel Eyes explores themes of emotional vulnerability, artistic freedom, and introspection. Co-written with longtime collaborator and friend Simon Aldred, the album includes the new single "My Guy," along with "To Be Free" and "Love Is a Stillness".

Their new single "Oh Mother", which features The TwoCity Chorus, will be released tomorrow.

This album is mature, and vastly different from the first 4 albums. Smith explores different genres within the album and seeks to not be defined by a label. This is one of smith’s most cohesive album to date and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the album!

#21 debut in the UK and I seen some posts over on X about the US prediction possibly being that it could miss top 100!

Interested in the reasons of this performance. Is it lack of knowledge that the albums been released or a lack of a solid fanbase. There were some discussions last week on the chart predictions thread.

I still need to hear the album in full but the songs I have heard wouldn’t have sounded out of place on either of Their first two albums.

21 minutes ago, Jordanlee1402 said:

I seen some posts over on X about the US prediction possibly being that it could miss top 100!

It's the Top 200, actually. The albums chart (known as Billboard 200) in the US has 200 slots, while the singles chart (commonly known as Hot 100) has 100 slots.

Either way, I think it was a mix of factors to be honest (re: lack of knowledge and lack of fanbase) and I'm kind of sure that the US market wasn't one of the main ones in this album. Yes, I'm aware that Sam's previous albums have charted inside the Top 10 in the US, but any of their singles have been promoted there. "Oh Mother" is receiving airplay on Hot AC though, which will be the counterpart of BBC Radio 2 (in the UK), but besides that, it has been nonexistent.

Aside of that, one of the reasons might be that they alienated their fanbase too over the years, especially with the release of Gloria. I applaud Sam for being true to themself, but we still live in a very conservative society where people judge everything, so I think that the change has been very abrupt and people opted to not follow them anymore.

The album sold 3.5k copies during the release week in the US. You could read the full article on Forbes here.

Hazel Eyes debuts on only one Billboard chart this week. Smith’s latest studio effort opens at No. 30 on the Top Album Sales ranking. Luminate reports that Hazel Eyes sold 3,500 copies during its first tracking period. That figure includes purchases across physical formats like CD, cassette and vinyl, as well as digital downloads.

This whole chart situation of Sam it is all very strange to me...it just feels like not long ago they were #1 with Unholy, no?!!

Well that was 4 years ago and helped a lot by going viral on TikTok. I just don't think the more stripped back sound on Hazel Eyes is appealing to many. Their last ballad that was a hit was Too Good At Goobyes which had much more production than the songs on this latest album.

This is unquestionably flop of the year I'd say.

TBH apart from Unholy - they haven't really been doing well in years have they?

Yeah Gloria would have been a big flop without Unholy. I feel like they might be able to get another hit if they bring back the Dancing With A Stranger/How Do You Sleep sound.

56 minutes ago, Jessie Where said:

This is unquestionably flop of the year I'd say.

maybe, that Lizzo album (predictably) absolutely bombed too though so I'd say it's not undisputed (at least Sam's still gotten some airplay this album cycle!)

some of the songs from B*TCH are barely doing 300(!) daily streams and have >180k lifetime streams - all of Sam's album tracks are already over 300k total streams

I think the main factors are that they never really carved out a solid fanbase. They started out on a couple of dance features, and then the first couple of albums were very adult contemporary in sound. It's very difficult to market an artist towards an older audience to build a solid fanbase in the long term, as you're competing against many many years of solidified favourites, at which point most people don't seem to care about investing in their favourite artist's new albums, let alone investing in a whole new artist altogether!

On top of that, the drastic change of direction (which actually aligned closer to their initial dance features) felt like it alienated the adult contemporary market they were initially being marketed at. They were already seen as too boring for the queer audience (which I'm pretty sure they were trying to pivot towards), and the music was seen as too raunchy/ott from their initial adult contemporary audience! Radio support wasn't quite the same from that point, and here we are now.

I think pivoting back to a sound closer to what they were initially known for was a bad call... The audience (and support) for that type of stuff has already been alienated. But who knows, maybe Sam isn't in it for the hits, in which case they can do whatever they want!

Supposedly they are already working on the follow up album which will be electropop so will be interesting to see how successful that might be but at this point it'll be a struggle I think.

Sam's upcoming performance at the London Coliseum on 9th September is being recorded by the BBC and will air on BBC One TBC. On 24th September, Jo Whiley will air highlights on her Radio 2 show.

Yeah i echo what people have already said they havent exactly been doing great for a while now anyway, unholy was 1 of those fluke Tik Tok hits otherwise people switched off a long time ago

The fact they are already rumoured to be moving on to their next album suggest they weren't expecting it to do great either

They must have expected it to go at least top 3/5 to produce the amount of variants they did!

It was completely obvious Lizzo was going to do nothing in the lead up to release, everyone here was predicting this top 3 or in the running for the top!