Sam Smith shared a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s classic “Time After Time” from his new live album, Love Goes: Live at Abbey Road Studios, which arrived on March 19.
Smith offers a faithful version of the 1983 Lauper classic, while the backing band captures the elegant yet delicate instrumentation of the original. Smith, for his part, keeps his vocals soft, but injects the right amount of passion and poignancy into the indelible hook: “If you’re lost, you can look and find me / Time after time”.
Along with the cover of “Time After Time”, Smith shared a 20-minute conversation with Lauper. At first, the duo discussed “Time After Time”, with Smith saying that while the song has always filled them with melancholy and longing, “It just made me very happy to sing.”
Lauper then praised Smith’s cover, saying, “When I was listening to your string arrangement, there were those wonderful and glorious antics, and that makes it almost spiritual.”
Smith cover for “Time After Time” and the rest of Love Goes: Live at Abbey Road Studios was taken from his only live performance in 2020, which was recorded on Abbey Road with a full band. The set of 13 songs features mostly songs from the Smith 2020 album, Love goes – including a collaboration with Labrinth on the title track – although it also exhibits reinterpretations of previous hits like “Lay Me Down” and “Stay With Me”.