Sam Smith Unveils ‘Lose You’ Lyric Video, Created Entirely on An iPad

Smith tapped Romanian illustrator Loreta Isac for the video, which riffs off the electro-pop beat and heartfelt lyrics with poetic sketches and colorful, whimsical imagery

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February 9, 2023

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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 05: Sam Smith performs onstage during the 65th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy )

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Fresh off a history-making win at the Grammys for “Unholy,” Sam Smith has unveiled the lyric video for their new song, “Lose You.” And just as the singer pushed boundaries with their Grammys performance, Smith eschewed traditional production methods when it came to creating the lyric video, choosing to put it all together with the new Apple iPad Pro.

Smith tapped Romanian illustrator Loreta Isac to help create the “Lose You” video, which riffs off the electro-pop beat and heartfelt lyrics with poetic sketches and colorful, whimsical imagery. The lyrics appear on screen like handwritten diary entries, further mirroring the deeply personal words that Smith sings in the song.

Isac worked with Smith to create a video that would match the at-once euphoric and poignant feel of the song, which the singer describes as their “Kylie meets George Michael meets Abba moment.”

Using the new iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, Isac began with freestyle sketches that expressed the mood of “Lose You” before finishing the images off in the illustration app Procreate. In a behind-the-scenes clip posted to her Instagram, Isac says “The lyrics feel like an ode to someone who is ready to do what’s right for love. So the visual story is a dance between reality and imagination.”

“For the Sam Smith ’Lose You’ lyric video, I used iPad Pro and Procreate — starting with sketching, documenting, listening to the music, coloring the illustrations, and animating them,” Isac explains. “I was really in love with the imagination part of creating the lyric video, as it allowed me to feel the poetry of the song and then translate it into unexpected visual emotions and animation.”

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Smith’s “Lose You” lyric video is the latest video created as part of the “Made On iPad” series, which pairs singers with illustrators and filmmakers who use an iPad to create a one-of-a-kind clip. Previous artists in the iPad series include Zedd and Maren Morris, whose video for “Made You Say” was created with rotoscope animation (a method of drawing over live-action film) done entirely on an iPad.

Smith’s lyric video was created on the new sixth-generation iPad Pro, which was released last fall. The latest release in Apple’s tablet lineup features a gorgeous 12.9‑inch Liquid Retina XDR display, a super fast Apple M2 chip and support for WiFi 6E, the latest high-speed internet standard.

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In addition to the Apple Pencil (2nd Generation), the iPad Pro is also compatible with Apple’s Magic Keyboard and other Bluetooth keyboards. Use the Apple Pencil to draw, sketch or jot down quick notes, then connect the Magic Keyboard when you want to start typing.

Procreate, meantime is one of the most-popular digital illustration apps for the iPad, with a suite of brushes, layering tools, transformation features and color adjustments designed to help artists enhance and bring their projects to life. Isac, who’s been designing with an iPad since 2017, credits Procreate for making it easier to add colors and animations to her work.

Find out more about the new iPad at Apple.com. As for Smith, the singer is set to embark on their “Gloria” tour this summer, with dates kicking off in July. Calling it their “diva album,” Smith says “Gloria is a celebration of all the genres and all the female divas, vocalists and pop writers that I love.”

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