Sunderland songwriter Tom A. Smith details debut album, The Golden Gates

Alongside the announcement, Smith has also spoken publicly for the first time about living with a rare heart condition, revealing the experiences that shaped the album. "Carrry That Weight" introduces Smith's personal world. The track is a statement that emerged from a spontaneous writing session with Hugo White, and was written in a single day, combining Smith's instinctive musical energy with an exploration of love, uncertainty and the fear that his health condition could become a burden to somebody he cares about. "Hugo knows my story, knows the situation. We did it all in a day," Smith explains. Born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Smith has spent his life navigating an uncertain future while keeping much of his medical history private. By the age of four, he had undergone five lifesaving open heart surgeries. "Upon my chest, etched on to my skin, is a scar. A scar that, and with everything that comes with it, haunted me for 20 years," he writes in a personal statement. "I was scared of it. I couldn't look at it in the mirror, I would pretend to be ill as a kid so I could miss things like swimming lessons or PE lessons because I was so scared of what the other children's ...