FEATURE: Spotlight: Myles Smith — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Myles Smith

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A rising artist…

who probably doesn’t need my kudos, and has had far bigger and more influential sites give him a thumbs up, I have overlooked Myles Smith until now. He is a really promising artist who of course you need to see on the road if you can. The recipient of four awards at this year’s BRITs – including Rising Star -, his E.P., A Minute…, was released late last year. There will be a lot of excitement and anticipation around a debut album. With a couple of E.P.s and a string of great singles under his belt, there is this growing and loving fanbase. I think he is going to be one of those artists who keeps getting bigger and better. Growing and expanding as he releases album after album. I want to move to some brilliant recent interview with Myles Smith. It is worth noting that Smith was recently included as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People. A boy from Luton, as he posted on Instagram, it must have been a huge honour and shock – though richly deserved. Let’s get to some of those interviews with Myles Smith. I am going to start out with the end of an interview that The Line of Best Fit published in February. This twenty-six-year-old artist enjoying a meteoric rise, I think the next year or two are going to be among the most successful and memorable for Myles Smith:

“Last year, Smith released two EPs – February’s River and November’s A Minute… – that represent the culmination of these early efforts. Working with the iconic producer Peter Fenn – whose other credits include cuts with Laufey, Fred again.., Valley, and Ava Max – he tracked some of his most intimate moments. Connecting with Peter, he says, helped bring out the best in his artistry simply since the two got along as friends so well. A Minute.., after all, is centered around those life-altering moments that can change everything, whether those moments be with a partner, a friend, or simply ones spent trying to make sense of your own mind.

And yet, in Smith’s songwriting exists an exciting contrast. He manages to take these vignettes and dial them up to anthems, creating stadium-ready singalongs out of his highest highs and lowest lows. “I’m delusional into thinking one day I’ll be playing in stadiums, and so I always write like I’m already there,” Smith says with a smile. “My songwriting approach is always starting from the point of I want a song to live forever and in a big way.”

If the pace Smith is keeping seems dizzying, that’s because it is. In the first half of 2025 alone, he’s set to trot across North America and Europe. “Finally, I feel like I’ve reached a point now where the stages are big enough and the audiences are big enough that I can really put on a show. Being able to delve into creating a solid show that people come and enjoy is super exciting,” he tells me.

Smith is not daunted by the task, nor does he see a break coming anytime soon. Instead, he just wants to do what he knows best and what he loves: writing and playing. That, after all, is what keeps him going. “Whether I’m on tour or off the road, I always try my hardest to put pen to paper,” Smith admits. “That’s the lifeblood of everything we do as musicians. Music drives everything”.

At the end of February, The Guardian interviewed Myles Smith. During his BRITs acceptance speech (for Rising Star) to call on the Government to use their platform and power to protect grassroots venues. Their sustainability is under threat. Without them, we would not have artists like Myles Smith. So many big artists started out playing at smaller venues. Their survival is essential:

“With abundant emotional intelligence as well as a keener political acumen than most pop singers his age, the 26-year-old Smith is sharp and engaging company on a video call as he tours the UK. Born and raised in Luton, he casts himself as a small-town oddball. “I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, in a Jamaican family – so my interest in rock and screamo, and not being able to play football and rugby, instantly put me in a different category to my peers,” he says. “In all walks of life I’ve felt a little bit different.”

His parents’ marriage fell apart when Smith was between the ages of nine and 13, “a critical period in anyone’s life when they’re forming relationships,” he says. Introducing a song to his 1.6m TikTok followers recently, he wryly said: “Anyone else’s parents divorce and then your dad leaves and then your whole perception of love and relationships is completely screwed up and you don’t know how to trust anyone in your adult life?”

“A lot of my personal development has been off the back of that [divorce] experience,” he says now. “I definitely had trust issues for a while.” He has had therapy – “such a beautiful tool” – to come to terms with it. “At the time [as a child] you’re never really aware – most of the learning comes when you’re an adult and you start to unpack the ways you think and feel. There’s a weird beauty to it – while it is painful and traumatic, and having to relive so many experiences is difficult, it also gives you this key to unlock a whole new side to yourself, when you do understand yourself better. And I’ve got a lot of [the trauma] to thank for being a good songwriter!”

Smith left Luton for the University of Nottingham to study sociology, and founded his own fast-growing business management company after graduating. But he’d been playing pub gigs since the age of 11, and decided to pivot to music, “knowing that if it all went wrong I could reactivate my LinkedIn and get back into the working world,” he laughs. “But those initial months were petrifying, stepping from a stable income to absolute uncertainty.” He started posting songs to TikTok in 2022, where his manager discovered him, and was signed to a major label deal with Sony the following year.

‘I never want to put a false sense of myself into the world, where I am this saviour. I push air – that’s my job’ … Smith performing in Dublin in February. Photograph: Debbie Hickey/Getty Images

But I can hear the sociology student still coming through when he discusses the systemic issues that can hold people like him back in the music industry. “For anyone from a working-class town, the opportunities to get into music are few and far between,” he says. “There’s a huge disadvantage when it comes to access to musical equipment, and even music lessons, at state school level.”

Smith benefited from Building Schools for the Future, an investment scheme brought in by Labour in 2005, then shuttered in 2010 by Michael Gove – who later regretted doing so – as the Tories’ austerity programme began. “I had access to GarageBand, iMacs, musical equipment,” Smith remembers. “And though the costing could be questioned, [the scheme] was very quickly pushed out the window. We’ve now seen years and years of austerity, and it’s not just the arts that have taken a hit – it’s anything that sits on the periphery of the mainstream route to work. There do need to be questions asked about how we’re valuing the arts in this country.”

Exacerbating the problem are the hardships faced by grassroots venues, which have been knocked hard by the Covid lockdowns and then the cost of living crisis. “Suddenly the gap between music being a hobby and being a career is wider than ever. In order to pay for a first show an artist might need to sell 500 tickets [at a medium-sized venue]. Whereas the bands and shows I used to see when I was younger was someone down the pub playing to 20 people, but those don’t exist any more.” And he sees a “dual burden” for people of colour, who as well as being statistically more likely to be working class, “are also not being seen for the amazing cultural value that they bring to this country, and what they add to one of our biggest cultural exports” – namely the arts. “More work needs to be done both on a class basis and a race basis.”

His music tends to be much less political, and is written in a way that allows listeners to map their own troubles and breakthroughs on to his songs. They frequently contact him to tell him so, and on social media, Smith recently reminded them: “It wasn’t my music that saved you – it was you.”

“A lot of people – and I really do appreciate it – will message me when they’re going through troublesome times,” he explains. “They’re dealing with mental health issues – or much further. I could take it as an ego lift: ‘Wow, I’m saving lives!’ But the reality is that those people are doing the hard work to really understand themselves. As an artist, I never want to put a false sense of myself into the world, where I am this saviour. I push air – that’s my job.”

As he hones his craft, Smith says he’s mindful to “take breaks from writing for a few months at a time, so I can go out and experience life, otherwise I’ll have nothing to say,” and also avoiding “external [musical] influence – I’m trying to find who I am, what I’m trying to say.” But time with Sheeran has been useful, seeing how “he has full confidence over his initial ideas. For me and many other songwriters, you can get stuck going over one line for 45 minutes. But he’s of the mindset that if it’s good, it’s good – why are we wasting time?”

After the Brit awards, Smyth has 37 gigs to play across Europe, the US and Australia – all before the end of May, when he starts 29 European stadium shows with Sheeran. It sounds exhausting, but he is clearly exhilarated. “I wrote a song recently about simply feeling good,” he says. “On the surface that could seem super cliched. But it’s taken a long time to just feel great, and not feel burdened with anything. That’s a byproduct of doing the thing that I love. Feeling good – that’s something I’ve been feeling recently!”.

I am going to finish off with a recent interview from Music Week. This is just a taster in terms of the press and interviews. I would urge people to do a bit more digging and listen and read as much as they can about Myles Smith. He is someone who is primed for many successful (and busy) years ahead in the music industry. If you do follow him already then make sure that you do:

“The UK industry's hottest new property Myles Smith has lifted the lid on his stunning breakthrough, signing to RCA and why he's in no hurry to release his debut album.

The Luton singer-songwriter, who covers the March edition of Music Week, has already notched up two UK Top 10 singles in Stargazing (1,147,392 sales, OCC) and Nice To Meet You (240,911 sales) and named winner of the BRITs Rising Star award for 2025, in addition to being crowned BBC Introducing Artist Of The Year.

Moreover, the 26-year-old, who will perform and is also up for Best New Artist, Song Of The Year and Pop Act at next month's BRITs, is adamant he is in it for the long haul.

“Having two Top 10 singles in my first year has been a real highlight,” he said. “It’s been such a good feeling, not just proving it to myself but also to the people who have trusted and invested so much time in me. This is not just a moment that will come and go, it’s the start of something real and long-term."

Indeed, despite his rapid progress to date, Smith indicated that he is taking his time with his first LP.

“I’m not sure when it’s going to come,” he said. “It’s all about carving out the time and making sure I’m in the right place. But when I get there, I want it to push the boundaries of what I’ve already put out, maybe be a bit closer to my heart, baring my soul a bit more.

“I don’t want to make music that’s just cool. I want to make music that I feel in my heart and soul could outlive me.”

Smith is currently on a headline run in the UK and Europe, including sold out London shows at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire (February 26) and Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo (March 26), and has 21 million monthly Spotify listeners, led by Stargazing's 666m global streams and counting.

He described the track, which peaked at No.4 in the UK and cracked the US Top 20, as “a beautiful song and a beautiful moment”.

“For people to have a song that explains such a grand emotion in such a simple way, it ticks the boxes,” he said. “It just gives me reassurance that I can write good music. Of course, I’ve sat there thinking, ‘Can I do it again?’ But then I’ve had to snap myself out of it and go, ‘I’ve done it, of course I could do it again.’ I wrote it not thinking I needed to write a smash song, more that I was going to write something that I love. I enter every session with that mindset.”

Initially coming to prominence after posting cover versions on TikTok – where he has 1.6m followers and 34.5m likes – Smith became a viral sensation with his renditions of Amber Run’s I Found and The Neighbourhood’s Sweater Weather.

“It started to go stratospheric,” he recalled. “I quickly started to gain tens of thousands of followers and then hundreds of thousands of followers, all within a really short space of time."

Smith signed to Sony Music UK’s RCA label in 2023, and has a high-ranking supporter in Sony Music UK & Ireland CEO & chairman Jason Iley.

“I’m delighted for Myles that he is doing so well, he deserves it!” Iley told Music Week. “It always comes down to the songs and he is a great songwriter. He had a very successful year globally in 2024 and there are no signs of that slowing down.”

The appreciation is mutual, with Smith expressing his gratitude for Iley's endorsement.

“He knows my weekly schedule and he’s a true believer in what I’m doing,” said Smith. “He’s always had the same mindset from the start, that the songs matter and the music you make matters, so create as much time as you can to truly invest in making great music, because you can become known for other things, who you date, where you go, scandals... He was like, ‘If your music speaks the loudest, that’s what is most important.’”

“One, it was music first. But two, they really cared about me as a person behind the artist, staying authentic, wanting to have my music reach millions but in the right way and in a way which is true to me,” he said

“A big part of the issues I was going through at the time, and still face somewhat right now, is that a lot of the world can box me in as being almost like an exception to the rule of a Black artist making pop music, and that could sometimes be made into a novelty or a spectacle.

“The RCA team really understood that, yes, I am a Black artist, and yes, I do have things to say about my culture and where I come from, but that shouldn’t be the focal point of who I am and what I represent. Not that that wasn’t said in other meetings I’d had, but it was something that they had actively considered. That was a real turning point for me”.

I am going to leave things there. A really important voice in music, do go and show Myles Smith support. Even though I sort of half-joked he does not need my assistance or spotlighting, I think any attention that comes his way is good! Someone whose music should be heard by as wide an audience as possible. He may be only a boy from Luton – not my words but you feel Myles Smith thinks along those lines -, he is now someone whose music belongs to the world. This amazing artist has come a long way. You know he has…