Money on My Mind

Before the world knew Sam Smith as a balladeer, "Money on My Mind" arrived as a jittering, garage-inflected pop record — skittering hi-hats, a bassline that ducks and returns, and a pitched-up vocal sample that flickers through the mix like a nervous tic. The Two Inch Punch production owes more to UK dance floors than to torch songs, and it moves with an anxious forward lean. The lyric is a young artist's declaration of independence dressed as a hook about cash: he insists he doesn't do this for money, that he'd rather make the record he wants than the one that sells, and the irony of it becoming a No. 1 single was noted by nearly everyone including Smith. Vocally it's the most acrobatic performance on In the Lonely Hour — the falsetto snapping into place on the title phrase, gospel-trained runs deployed with a lightness that later ballads traded for weight. It sits oddly and wonderfully against the album's heartbreak material, a burst of nerve in a record otherwise devoted to unrequited longing. Play it in the morning when you're deciding to do something on your own terms and need three minutes of momentum to commit.