Sam Smith Tweets "I'm Straight" as April Fools' Day Joke—But Not Everyone Is Laughing!

Openly gay singer faces some backlash for what some see as trivializing sexual orientation

Sam Smith has been open about the fact that he's a gay man for as long as he's been in the public eye, so when the singer posted a tweet Wednesday stating otherwise, there was some confusion in the social media-sphere.

"Guys I have some news... I'm straight," tweeted the 22-year-old Grammy winner. Moments later, he followed up with an explanatory tweet, writing simply, "April fools"! Sam included the crying-from-laughing emoji with his latter post, but not everyone was laughing at the gist of his joke.

While some fans were amused (but not surprised) to discover the British singer hadn't actually switched sexual orientations, others were tweeting mad at the star for seemingly trivializing the concept. 

Sam is aware of his role within the gay community, though. He talked to Ellen DeGeneres about this back in December 2014, saying, "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. You know, straight people, gay people, bisexual. I don't want to be limited."

This isn't the first time he's spoken out about this either. In an earlier interview with Fader, Sam talked about wanting to focus on talking about his music more than his personal life. "I am comfortable with myself, and my life is amazing in that respect," he said. "I'm very comfortable and happy with everything. I just wanted to talk about him [the ex-boyfriend who inspired "Stay With Me"] and have it out there. It's about a guy and that's what I wanted people to know—I want to be clear that that's what it's about. I've been treated as normal as anyone in my life; I've had no issues. I do know that some people have issues in life, but I haven't, and it's as normal as my right arm. I want to make it a normality because this is a non-issue."

"People wouldn't ask a straight person these questions," he went on. "I've tried to be clever with this album [In the Lonely Hour], because it's also important to me that my music reaches everybody. I've made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody—whether it's a guy, a female or a goat—and everybody can relate to that. I'm not in this industry to talk about my personal life unless it's in a musical form."

He later told Ellen that he disclosed he was gay before he released his first album in May 2014, "because if I did it afterwards, people probably would have thought I was lying just to sell records."