Unholy
Sam Smith & Kim Petras
"Unholy" operates like a trap door opening beneath a church organ. Sam Smith and Kim Petras built a song that is simultaneously theatrical and viscerally physical — the production rides a stuttering, militaristic beat draped in Gothic cabaret flourishes, a low brass undercurrent giving everything a sinister gravitational pull. Smith's voice is used as an instrument of deliberate scandal here, stripping away the gospel-adjacent vulnerability of their earlier work in favor of something confrontational and carnivalesque. Petras arrives for her verse like a neon sign flickering to life, her delivery playful and sharp, contrasting Smith's heavier presence. The lyrical subject matter — a spouse's secret life, the hypocrisy of respectability — is delivered without moral judgment, which is part of what made this song culturally charged upon release. It became an anthem for queer expression that refused apology, arriving at a moment when both artists' identities were under public scrutiny. The song is for dancing in a dim room where the bass lives in your sternum, for nights when you want to shed the version of yourself other people built for you. It won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo, cementing its place as a mainstream rupture — pop music briefly letting something genuinely subversive through the door.
medium
2020s
dark, theatrical, dense
British and American pop, queer cultural expression
Pop, Electronic. Dark cabaret pop. defiant, playful. Opens with theatrical Gothic menace and escalates into carnivalesque, unapologetic celebration of subversive identity.. energy 8. medium. danceability 8. valence 6. vocals: confrontational, theatrical, bold, contrasting duet, deliberate scandal. production: stuttering militaristic beat, Gothic cabaret flourishes, low brass undertone, dark synths. texture: dark, theatrical, dense. acousticness 2. era: 2020s. British and American pop, queer cultural expression. Dancing in a dim room with bass in your sternum when you want to shed the version of yourself other people built for you.