Mary J Blige wants to be like Sam Smith.

Mary J Blige

Mary J Blige

The 'Right Now' singer has previously collaborated with the 'Stay With Me' hitmaker and has admitted she wishes she was more like the 22-year-old singer.

She told Glamour magazine: "Sam is just unlike a lot of new artists. He has so much humility, he's so grateful and he's still so taken back from all of this but at the same time he's very confident and decisive.

"I've watched him be so decisive and I love that about him - I'm like, 'I wanna be like that'."

Meanwhile, Sam was equally full of praise for his collaborator and admitted he initially wanted to keep a track he wrote, 'Therapy', for himself but gave it to Mary because she "fell in love" with it.

Speaking about the track, he said: "Obviously Mary J. Blige is a huge influence to me, and I adore her. And I would have jumped at the opportunity of course at any time, but the way it happened was so amazing. I almost got to know her before I even began.

"The song 'Therapy', which she sang at the AMAs, I wrote for my record. But then she heard it and fell in love with it and she sang it. And I actually only took two days off, actually, to go in the studio and write.

"But I feel so emotionally invested in it, and it's so weird for me to say that Mary has now become my friend."