Myles Smith, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Luton, has just been named as the Brits Rising Star for 2025, without even releasing his first full-length album.
He’s been given the same nod that stars such as Adele (Brits Rising star for 2008) and Florence and the Machine (Brits Rising Star for 2009).
The Brighton-based musician has already had a sold-out UK and Europe tour, played Glastonbury 2024, and had a nod on Barack Obama’s summer playlist. The former US President is a fan of Smith’s breakout song Stargazing, which he originally released in snippets on TikTok where he currently has 1.5 million followers.
Smith signed with Sony Music Publishing UK in September and is currently on a sold-out We Were Never Strangers tour of US and Canada. “This is just the beginning,” Smith said at the Brit Awards. “I’m so excited for what’s to come.”
He’ll be back in London next year, where he’s playing a headline show at the Eventim Apollo on March 26 2025.
Here are the Myles Smith songs to put on your 2025 playlist now:
Stargazing
Stargazing cracked the Top 5 UK Charts and spent 10 weeks on the Billboard Top 100, proving Smith’s transatlantic appeal. He wrote it while out in Malibu, California, earlier this year. “I get back to West Hollywood at two or three in the morning, and I play the day-of demo,” he told Billboard magazine. “I remember my manager waking up on the sofa like, ‘What is this?’ Everyone in the house is running and jumping around. For my team — my harshest critics, after my mum — to give me that genuine reaction, I knew I was on to something.”
My Home
“You'll always be my home, my heart/I'll be with you wherever you are”. Despite the sweet lyrics and folk inflections, don’t mistake this for a romantic tune. “Fun fact, it ain’t a love song,” Smith himself says on his YouTube. In fact, he wrote the song about his beloved mother.
Waste
English singer-songwriter James Bay collaborated with Smith on their song Waste. Smith documented the process on TikTok, naturally, where you can see Bay jamming on the piano while Smith strums the guitar behind him. “I wrote a song with James Bay... what is life,” the Gen Z artist captioned his video.
Nice to Meet You
Smith released his new song Nice to Meet You in November, along with a music video he shot in Austin, Texas. "It's inspired by stories from friends in my life," Smith told Broken 8 Records. "A reminder that the right person can change everything, often when you least expect it.”
Solo
This one is a love song, or rather, a heartbreak song. “Why’d you get me so high/To leave me so low?” Smith asks plaintively in this stompy indie-folk track that’s a nice play on words (”so low” and “solo”, geddit?). It was released in November last year and became Smith’s first top 100 single in the UK charts in March 2024.
Wait For You
“It gets better when you reach the other side,” Smith promises in this rousing song about pushing through. “It delves into the struggle of watching a friend (my previous self) battle their inner demons and their commitment to stand by them through their darkest times,” Smith said in a statement. “The lyrics reflect a promise of unwavering support and patience, capturing the essence of a relationship that transcends time and hardship.”
