Myles Smith is releasing his debut album this week, though his past achievements might suggest otherwise. The Luton-born singer has already won a Brit Award and an Ivor Novello Award, supported Ed Sheeran in stadiums, and amassed two billion streams with songs like Stargazing. Yet, this is his first full-length project.
“It feels very backwards,” Smith admits. “I’ve toured the world a couple of times, met my heroes, and had so many amazing experiences, all before my debut album. It’s quite wild. But I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Having the time to put something together with intention has felt right.”
His debut, My Mess, My Heart, My Life, is a 15-track album written and recorded on the move—between tour buses, dressing rooms, Airbnbs, and studios. It showcases serious artistic weight.
“I wanted to write a project that reflected all the range of emotions and feelings,” he says. “To delve, in a visceral way, into real things that shaped the person I am. It’s like the human experience in a box.”
In an era of solo male balladeers, sentimentality can feel manipulative, but Smith’s record is raw and unflinching. It tells stories of domestic abuse, trauma, violence, and fear. When his soaring heartfelt songs arrive, they hit harder, carried by the euphoria of transcending pain.
On the opener, My Mess, he sings of being “born into a fractured family where a word can start a war” and a male figure being violent: “He grabbed my shirt and he bruised my cheek. Sad a man had to go toe to toe with a boy thirteen.” The song reflects on emotional trauma: “I’m still not able to open up even to the people that I love.”
“It was a really cathartic experience writing that,” he says. “I’d been with some writers in Oslo, all close friends, and we ended up oversharing one night after a couple too many red wines. I shared my history.”
He recalls going to bed and flicking through therapy notes, finding an exercise where you ask yourself “why?” five times to find the root of issues. “I was struggling with indecision and wrote, ‘Why do you struggle to make decisions? Because I don’t want to upset anyone. Why don’t you want to upset anyone?’ It naturally became: is there a song in this?”
Opening the album with it was “exposure therapy” and a marker for the entire work. “Had I gone for a safer track emotionally, I might not have had the confidence to put the others on the final product.”
Was it tough to revisit that violent place? He pauses. “When you have therapy notes, you can almost detach from it. It was emotionally exhausting to read through, but also amazing to think about where I am now. I’ve had reassurances from family and friends that they’re super proud of me.”
Going to difficult places is crucial for the album’s intent. While Stargazing is included, he says, “I don’t just want to shoot for massive radio songs. I want to do it the right way, not because I’m chasing numbers.”
The album includes Grandma’s Place, about the safe space his grandmother gave him: “10 when I started to sing, oh she’d bring me to church, and she’d cover my ears, when my dad would scream horrible things.” Another track, Sertraline, refers to the antidepressant. Smith says, “Talking about my mental health is important because so much of what we see online is, ‘I was really bad and now I’m fine’, and the journey in between is missed. It paints an unrepresentative picture of what it means to be in the thick of it.”
Mary’s Song touches on domestic abuse and trauma. Smith was “super careful” with the track, which came from conversations with two friends who went through abuse. “It was a sobering moment when I met my second friend who had been through it. Distinguishing how differently men and women navigate the world and what their experiences are.”
While he doesn’t want to generalise all men as abusive, extreme male behaviour is an issue all men must understand. “Watching Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, it’s scary some of the opinions that exist, and how influential some of them are. It’s important to shed light on how wrong that way of thinking is, and offer an alternative rather than being combative. The kind of example I’d like to be is showing that leading with emotion and sensitivity is what makes you a man and what makes you strong.”
Smith has been maturing fast as an artist, but his drive to take risks has always been there. He was writing songs in primary school in Luton— “My first song was called Dream Girl, about someone I fancied. I played it in assembly, it didn’t go down too well” — and playing gigs at 11, snuck in and out of open-mic nights with landlords’ agreement.
Years of busking and gigging built his chops. “Having to convince people in their mid-40s, having a Guinness after a long day at work, that you’re the next superstar, when you’re this 11-year-old singing with a half-broken voice… you develop thick skin, and skills of holding crowds and dealing with humans. Those lessons were invaluable.”
While Myles Smith delves into darker places with this debut, it’s one of many expressions of his approach: putting empathy and vulnerability first. His success has been built on an ability to connect.
“I feel as a black male pop artist, it’s important that I use my platform to talk about things that carry meaning. And in its very essence, music has always been a vehicle for saying things that need to be said.”
The year ahead will see him supporting his “friend before colleague” Sheeran in the US, juggling that with his own headline tour, and coming back to the UK for his first arena tour, including a night at the O2. But he doesn’t want to process it yet.
“I had this conversation with Ed not too long ago, and he said it was only after his first five years that he was able to take a break and go, ‘Oh, I’ve actually done some stuff.’ I’m going to give it a few more years before I take stock.”
There are no flashy cars or massive houses—he lives modestly just outside London. All of that is beside the point. “My creative space has always been sacred, so I’ve never changed the way I do it or lost the why. My mum was really pivotal in that, making sure that my ‘why’ wasn’t attached to achievements or success or finance. She always made sure that my why for making music is based on the ability to communicate, in human connection, and those things are an endless pursuit.”
My Mess, My Heart, My Life is out June 19.
