Here's a sort-of new Sam Smith tune

If you've read any of Sam Smith's interviews, you'll be aware that the bequiffed balladeer suffered more than his fair share of false starts before hitting the big time (current highlights: A top two album in the US, singing with Mary J Blige, making Lady Gaga cry).

In fact, he went through nine managers before he was 21. Nine.

"I was very young, I was still in school and everyone had a lot of ideas about what they wanted me to do, but I didn't myself," he told me when he won the BBC Sound of 2014. "There was a lot of drama, basically."

Less well known is that he recorded an entire album during that period - and now the company that owns it is trying to cash in letting us hear some of those early tracks.

Moments was uploaded to Soundcloud earlier this week and you can hear the potential in Smith's performance, even if he was too timid to really let those big notes rip. I note that it's not the original version (which was presumably too anaemic for public consumption) but a doleful deep house remix, with a punchy piano riff that frames his sad-sack vocals perfectly.

Of archival interest, if nothing else.

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