Myles Smith is releasing his debut album this week — but didn’t he have one out already? Apparently not, it’s just a trick of the mind caused by Smith’s high-profile achievements over the past couple of years: winning a Brit Award and an Ivor Novello Award, supporting Ed Sheeran in stadiums and having songs such as Stargazing rack up two billion streams.
“It feels very backwards,” Smith admits. “I’ve toured the world a couple of times, I’ve been able to meet my heroes and have so many amazing memorable 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.”
And it’s quite something. Written and recorded on the move — “between tour buses and dressing rooms and Airbnbs and studios” — we’re talking about a 15-track album called My Mess, My Heart, My Life. which shows Smith possesses 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 who I am. It’s like the human experience in a box.”
“I wanted to write a project that reflected all the range of emotions”
In the age of the Solo Male Balladeer, things can easily drift into a sentimentality verging on manipulation — records designed to wring out your tears in the name of unit-shifting. Not so here. Smith is raw on this record, the songs unflinching and at times shocking, telling stories of domestic abuse, trauma, violence, fear. When his more familiar style of soaring heartfelt songs then come along, they hit harder, carried by the euphoria of transcending pain.
And there is pain here. 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 towards him, “he grabbed my shirt/And he bruised my cheek/Sad a man had to go toe to toe/With a boy thirteen.” The song then reflects on the emotional trauma from this: “I’m still not able to open up/Even to the people that I love.”
“It was a really, really cathartic experience writing that,” he says. “I’d been with some writers in Oslo, all really close friends, and we ended up oversharing one night after a couple too many red wines. Oversharing our deepest, darkest traumas — and I’d shared my history.
“I remember going to bed and flicking back through my therapy notes, stumbling across this exercise that I do with my therapist where you ask yourself ‘why?’ five times to find the root of your issues. I was struggling with indecision and I’d written, ‘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?”
He considers opening the album with it as “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.”
But was it tough to put yourself back in that violent place? He pauses. “When you have therapy notes it’s good because you’re able to almost detach from it. It was emotionally exhausting to have to read through it, but it was also amazing to think about where I am now, so far away from it… I’ve had reassurances from family and friends that they’re super proud of me.”
He says going to these difficult places is crucial for the intent of the album. While Stargazing is on there, he says, “I don’t just want to shoot for absolutely massive radio songs. I want to do it the right way, not because I’m chasing numbers.” It means you’ll find 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…” — and Sertraline, referring 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 like to be in the thick of it.
“I’ve been through so many steps of difficulty and I’ve tried to find a song for each of those. That’s why the album is what it is.”
“I’ve been through so many steps of difficulty and I’ve tried to find a song for each”
Mary’s Song touches upon domestic abuse and the trauma that results. It’s a track Smith was “super careful” with, and which came from conversations with two different friends who went through difficult abuse situations. He says, “It was a really 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 undoubtedly an issue all men have to seek understanding of. “Watching Louis [Theroux]: Inside the Manosphere [the documentary about ultra-masculine networks], it’s scary some of the opinions that exist, and it’s scary how influential some of them are. It’s important to shed light on how wrong that way of thinking is, and also offer an alternative rather than just 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.”
It’s clear Smith is maturing fast as an artist, but the drive within him to take risks and excel has always been there. He was writing songs when he was 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, being snuck in and out of open-mic nights at pubs and bars with the agreement of landlords.
Years of busking and gigging built his chops, and he says, “Having to convince people in their mid-40s, having a Guinness after a very 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 the thick skin, and the skills of holding crowds and dealing with humans. Those lessons were invaluable.”
Let’s be clear: while Myles Smith delves into darker places with this debut, it is simply one of many expressions of his approach, which is to put empathy and vulnerability first. His success has been built on an ability to connect.
He says, “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 and a tool for saying things that need to be said.”
Myles Smith's playlist
Niall Horan, Tastes So Good
“Everyone knows how much I love Niall.”
Noah Kahan, The Great Divide
“I’m super jealous I didn’t write this.”
Sam Fender & Olivia Dean, Rein Me In
“The both of them on this track is a magical recipe!”
The year ahead will see him supporting his “friend before colleague” Sheeran in the US, juggling that with his own headline tour — “that should be interesting, playing five shows a week” — making sure that he and Ed, both football nuts, catch as much of the World Cup as they can — “I’m watching the final in Vegas” — before coming back to the UK for his first arena tour, including a night at the O2. Dizzying stuff for this humble man, 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.”
As such there are no purchases of flashy cars yet. Nor massive houses — he lives modestly just outside London. All of that is beside the point with this purest of musicians.
“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 always 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
