Myles Smith on his stunning rise from TikTok artist to the next global pop superstar

Yahoo

30-01-2025

This time last year, Myles Smith was a name still largely contained within the hashtags and shares of TikTok. A rapidly rising favourite on the app, he'd gained early success from posting covers online — stripped back, acoustic renditions of Ed Sheeran, Amber Run and The Neighbourhood that had gone on to ink him a record deal with Sony RCA.
Then, in May, the 26-year-old Luton native released Stargazing, a rousing ode to finding the elusive 'One' that, in its less than three minute run time, changed his fortunes entirely. By the close of 2024, Stargazing had gone on to become the year's highest streaming song by a UK artist, also beating anything released by Beyoncé or Ariana Grande on the global chart.
Subsequently picking up the Brits Rising Star 2025 award — a gong previously won by the likes of Adele and Sam Fender — he'll begin this year in earnest with a stop off at the ceremony and a largely sold-out solo world tour before going on to support Sheeran across a string of European stadium dates; a closing of the circle barely more than two years after opening it.
It's a trajectory that even the most grounded and unassuming of artists — a category that Smith, calling in from snowy New York ahead of his first live show of the year, clearly falls into — would find hard to play down.
'I definitely knew that Stargazing would connect, but to the extent it connected, no. I'm not gonna sit here and say I saw this song being eight consecutive weeks at No 1 in the US and doing however many hundreds of millions of sales. No, I definitely hadn't thought that…' he chuckles. 'I did think it would be a song that my fans would like and I did think it would be a song that would move the posts a bit, but how much it did I'm eternally grateful for.'
Cutting his teeth playing open mic gigs in his local pub circuit, when Smith says that mainstream fame is something he never really considered, it seems believable. Far more interested in talking about access to the arts than name-dropping any new-found celebrity mates, you can identify the sociology graduate in him (Smith finished his degree at Nottingham University in 2019) far more readily than the burgeoning household name.
'I tussle with the idea of fame because I think what I do is really awesome and really cool, but also there are so many awesome people in the world that don't get half the acknowledgement that they should do,' he says. 'Sometimes it feels really odd that I'm put on this pedestal when I'm just making music. All I'm doing is just pushing air.'
Alongside the encouragement of watching black British artists like Labrinth and Stormzy ('People who looked and sounded like me') go on to huge artistic success, it's this foundation of education that Smith credits with giving him the confidence to pursue his musical goals.
'Going through the education system and on to college and university, all of those steps taught me that, with the right belief and equipping myself with the right skills — and seeing the value in learning and building over time — anything is achievable and possible. Applying the same principles in music, it was sort of a like-for-like trade,' he suggests.
Coupled with this was his Luton secondary state school's crucial access to arts funding. One of the institutions helped by the Building Schools for the Future initiative in the mid-2000s, it gave a young Smith the physical tools to learn his craft. 'When you look at state schools and deprived areas — how on earth do you expect children to get into music when instruments aren't accessible to them from a young age?' he questions now.
For marginalised young people, Smith notes, the barriers are even higher. 'Being able to create live music costs a bomb, so when you see a surge in black communities or working-class communities making trap music or drill music, which is predominantly made on a laptop, I see that as entrepreneurial,' he continues. 'Yet that's being shut down as music that isn't quite music, but then you're also offering no alternative pathway to get into the industry. I had access to instruments and MacBooks and GarageBand to get started and, had I not been given that opportunity, would I be here? Probably not.'
With Trump's US government having recently pressed pause on the country's proposed TikTok ban, the future of the app that made Smith's name also hangs in limbo. For the musician, the platform was an invaluable entry point into an industry whose doorways are dwindling year on year. 'We have no access to play music live so then we use social media, but then social media is criticised for devaluing what music is, so we're just in this constant loop of being stuck as an artist coming through,' Smith says.
'It's a really difficult time for new artists. There are so many contradictions happening all the time. My view on social media is that it's a gem and it's allowing people to do a lot of things and, until we've figured out an infrastructure at a grassroots level, it's the only route we have.'
Whether Smith's meteoric rise will be remembered as one of TikTok's last is still yet to be seen, but there's no denying the wild ride it's helped catapult the songwriter onto.
He's been soaking up some pearls of wisdom from his future tour buddy, to ride out the peaks and troughs and 'just keep doing what I'm doing and not be deterred. I've hung out with Ed a few times and he's such a lovely guy. I think for him, he just wanted to be able to give an opportunity to someone who has aspirations to go on and dream big,' Smith smiles. And for all his humility, the singer's dreams are evidently as sky-high as they come.
'Oh, I'm delusional as hell!' he laughs. 'I would love to be playing stadiums in my career. I've always been a dreamer in that sense. I want my music to connect at the biggest level and, had I not thought I could do that, I don't know if I'd be doing this.'
With eight months of solid touring on the cards, Smith is taking his time when it comes to following up Stargazing and last year's A Minute… EP with a full-length debut. He's writing and recording 'most days' but is happy to wait it out if need be rather than rushing the milestone.
'I think about it every day because ultimately I want to be an album artist, and every artist I've aspired to be like has lived and breathed albums,' he says. 'I think it'll feel right when I feel like I've captured everything I need to say in this first chapter. There are still stories that haven't been written yet, so when I have a nice diversity of those then it'll come.'
Having launched his career by documenting the highs and lows of his everyday, however, don't expect Smith's new starry lifestyle to feature that heavily on any of his future material. 'Absolutely not,' he laughs, 'and if I ever did, I hope that you start a smear campaign against me…'