Sam Smith has revealed that he decided to come out as gay before releasing his album as he thought that "people probably would have thought I was lying just to sell records" if he waited until afterwards. During an appearance on The Ellen Show, Smith said that while he knew his honestly could impact the success of the record, he wanted people to know what had inspired the material. "I kind of just felt like I needed to mention it before I released the record so people knew what it was about. And it felt like a brave thing to do as well I wanted to do it before because if I did it afterwards people probably would have thought I was lying just to sell records. It didn't feel like a coming out. I came out when I was like four years old. My mom said she knew when I was, like, three," he explained. However, the 22-year-old said that he was not entirely comfortable with being seen as a spokesperson for the gay community as he did not want to alienate his other fans. "I'm a singer and a songwriter. I get upset sometimes because I don’t talk about it too much. People say, he doesn’t want to be a spokesperson for the gay community. I do, of course I do, but I want to be a spokesperson for everyone. Ya know straight people, gay people, bisexual. I don’t want it to be limited."