Sam Smith on the cover of Rolling Stone

Between Howard Stern calling him fat and ugly and having to settle a copyright dispute with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, it hasn’t been the best of weeks for music sensation Sam Smith.

But then something like this happens: Sam lands on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Sam says that as a kid, he dreamed of being on the cover of that magazine.

His dream comes true when the magazine’s next issue hits newsstands on Friday.

In the article, Smith opens up about some other things that happened as a kid: falling in love with a straight classmate in school and also being bullied for being gay.

He recalls writing a ‘really intense’ love letter to a popular classmate who was two years older than him when he was in his early teens.

The student turned out to be straight but instead of freaking out, he responded with a thoughtful letter of his own.

‘It makes me emotional, actually,’ Smith recalls, his eyes tearing up. ‘He looked out for me for the rest of school. He just made sure that if anyone took the piss out of me, he would stick up for me. He could have made it hell for me, you know?’

Others were not as kind.

He was once walking through town with his dad and someone drove by and yelled ‘faggot.’

‘I was just embarrassed that my dad had to see that, because I could only imagine how you feel as a parent. You just want to kill them. I was always embarrassed for the people around me. It actually never deeply affected me, you know?’

Another time, after he moved to London and came out, he was attacked as he walked around wearing make up.

‘I got punched in my neck, just out of nowhere,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t the easiest.’