A Study of Sam Smith’s Latest Songs: a Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

This research aimed to identify the various stylistic elements used in Sam Smith's latest songs and to understand the reasons behind the popularity of both Sam Smith and their latest songs. To achieve this, the study employed Leech and Short's linguistic and stylistic checklists, focusing on figures of speech, as well as Delve & Limpaecher's Conventional Content Analysis method. The stylistic analysis of Sam Smith's three latest songs - "Unholy," "Diamonds," and "To Die For," revealed that the most frequently observed grammatical and lexical schemes were Parallelism and Anaphora, while Alliteration is the most observed in phonological schemes. Additionally, Metaphor and Hyperbole were the most commonly used foreground features. Additionally, the content analysis of three selected articles indicated that Sam Smith's popularity as well as the popularity of their latest songs could be attributed to two factors. The first factor is, according to the findings, their musical talent, and the second is their unique identity as non-binary or queer individuals.