If there's any takeaway from the exquisitely-crafted music video for British singing sensation Sam Smith's upcoming single, “I'm Not the Only One”—off of his multi-platinum hit album In the Lonely Hour—it's that love is not black-and-white and that relationships are far more complex than we can ever comprehend. The dark and heart-wrenching lyrics in Smith's jazzy-soul track, due out on August 31, perfectly match the storyline of the Luke Monaghan-directed clip, starring The Mindy Project's Chris Messina as a philandering husband and Glee's Dianna Agron as his beautiful yet jilted wife. Given the sequence of events in the video, in which the wife experiences heartbreak while the husband carries on with his fling, one would expect the typical Hollywood-like ending—but not in this case, which makes it far more satisfying if not melancholy. The message of “I'm Not the Only One” is certainly aligned with what Smith recently said in his FADER cover story about relationships. “I’ve never been in a relationship before,” he said. “I’ve only been in unrequited relationships where people haven’t loved me back. I guess I’m a little bit attracted to that in a bad way. In the Lonely Hour is about a guy that I fell in love with last year, and he didn’t love me back. I think I’m over it now, but I was in a very dark place. I kept feeling lonely in the fact that I hadn’t felt love before. I’ve felt the bad things. And what’s a more powerful emotion: pain or happiness?”
