Chartbreaker: 'Stargazing' Is Radio Hit For Myles Smith But His Eyes Are Higher: 'I Want To Be An Album Artist'

Years before Miles Smith broke out with his anthemic single “Stargazing,” he followed his mother's advice by focusing on his education — graduating from the University of Nottingham in 2019, starting his own company at 19 and making it profitable at 23.

“I [was] i earn good money but i [wasn’t] it is fulfilled in my heart,” explains Smith. “That, for me, was a moment [realizing] that I can't spend years of my life doing something that I know I'm not really fully invested in.” So he resigned – and already, just two years later, the returns have exceeded any concerns.

As he talks to me Advertising sign from his Brighton home in late June, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter's breakout hit “Stargazing” peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, earning 61.2 million official streams streams on demand in the US through June 27, according to Luminate. He has also been announced as a support act for select dates on Imagine Dragons' upcoming autumn tour and will travel to Australia and New Zealand in November for his own headlining tour, which has sold out shows across Europe and North America.

As a child born to a Jamaican family in Luton, England, Smith consumed a wide variety of genres: Reggae was the mainstay, but between his mother's love of Whitney Houston's “Million Dollar Bill” and the indoctrination of his brothers of Destiny's Child, Ne-Yo and Justin Timberlake, he listened to a lot of R&B. His working-class neighborhood also exposed him to hip-hop and grime, but it was the music of the 2010s that really honed his songwriting skills. He credits Adele's heartbreaking lyricism 21by Ed Sheeran +by Bryson Tiller Trapsul and Mumford & Sons' Babylonia as four main albums.

While building his sound, he began uploading unfinished song snippets to TikTok, one of which caught the attention of Extended Play Group's Eric Parker as he stumbled across For You's page in the fall of 2022. “It was a very sad song. [that] hit me in a place I don't usually get hit on TikTok,” says Parker. He immediately reached out and began managing Smith in November.

The two worked to build his following, fusing his originals with evocative covers of songs that tapped into Gen Z's penchant for nostalgia, including The Neighborhood's “Sweater Weather.” “Covers [were] an opportunity to find an audience that I thought would match the music I would eventually create,” he explains.

With a growing online fan base by 2023, Smith independently released his own singles through Ditto Music, including first tracks such as thumping “My house” and the witty word festival “Solo” (his first UK hit). Once it surpassed four million monthly listeners on Spotify, Smith and Parker agreed it was time to look for a record deal. After meeting with several potential partners, Smith signed with RCA UK last January, in partnership with the US label.

“[My] incredible A&R Jaryn [Valdry] he made me cry my eyes out in a meeting because he saw me for who I was,” says Smith. “[RCA’s] The whole philosophy is that growth over a long period of time and not a flash in the pan really aligned with me.”

Two months later, Smith dropped his debut EP, You promised a lifetime. “Stargazing” — written in Malibu, California shortly after signing his deal — wouldn't arrive until May. Fueled by Fireball shots, nachos and tacos, he and co-writers Peter Fenn and Jesse Fink went through “eight or nine songs,” before Smith settled on a chorus melody so catchy it sparked an immediate search for complementary chords. Most of the song was written in 15 minutes, with lyrical details to be finalized over the coming weeks. And when the rest of his team heard it, they boosted his confidence in the looming hit.

“I go back to West Hollywood at two or three in the morning and play the day's demo on his speakers [ceiling]”, he remembers. “I remember my manager waking up on the couch like, 'What is this;Everyone in the house is running and jumping. For my team — my toughest critics, after my mom — to give me that genuine reaction, I knew I had something.”

They soon began a monthly release for the song, culminating in its release on May 10 to coincide with the start of his next tour. The first passage that he posted on TikTok on April 8 doubles down on the intimacy of his guitar-driven singer-songwriter style, and each subsequent teaser featured more of his crew lip-syncing and dancing to the track.

“Being able to draw people into the context of the song really works,” says Smith. “I'm Miles Smith, but I have a team and they're my best friends. There is a strange culture about everything that revolves around the artist. Do you think I could do this without everyone around me? No way.”

The song's radio campaign began across the pond, but Parker reports that RCA wanted to make an immediate stateside push. “They were very proactive, [which] it was a good sign that they believed in the song as much as we did.” Their hunch was right: “Stargazing” continues to build at radio, debuting on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated July 6 and reaching new peaks on Alternative Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay.

In his discovery, Smith sees himself as someone known for his complete body of work. “I want to be an album artist,” he emphasizes. “There's only so much you can say in an EP or single.” But more importantly, it has focused on exemplifying how the music industry intersects with the world's largest systems of oppression.

“I don't want to be used as a vehicle to say, 'We've done enough,'” he says of his success in the Black singer-songwriter space. “If anything, I want to be used as a question because there aren't more Myleses breaking through.”

A version of this story will appear in the July 20, 2024 issue Advertising sign.