Myles Smith on his stunning rise from TikTok artist to the next global pop superstar
Myles Smith on his stunning rise from TikTok artist to the next global pop superstar
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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.
![[Myles Smith]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2025/01/30/16/05/Myles-Smith-4lgkf90i.jpeg?quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
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.
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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.”.
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