Album of the week: Myles Smith – 'My Mess, My Heart, My Life.'

When, for one of his first interviews, I talked to Myles Smith in early 2024, he was “just” a singer-songwriter whose viral TikTok covers (Amber Run’s ‘I Found’, Sweater Weather by ‘The Neighbourhood’) had recently landed him a major label record deal. The release of ‘Stargazing’, the global smash that would earn him the BRIT Rising Star Award a year later, was still four months away. But he explained to me the musical roots that had grown a songwriting skillset that had encouraged Sony to beat off 20 competing labels.

“I grew up as a young black boy in Luton, so I guess I wasn't an out and proud Coldplay fan!” he admitted with a laugh. “I definitely wasn't embarrassed about it. I just think that it wouldn't be the thing I'd mention first. But it would be the thing that I probably play first on my iPhone.”

Acknowledging the deep influence, too, of both Ed Sheeran and Labrinth, he added that he “was a fan of songs that connect to me. I was a huge Green Day fan growing up. That's a punk band from West Coast America and I'm in Luton screaming out 'American Idiot!' It was all about the music that moved me and spoke to me the most. And it wasn't always lyrical content. Sometimes it was just how it made me feel. Was it the guitars or the tones?"

Now, finally, after that huge success of ‘Stargazing’ and, also in '24, 'Nice to Meet You’ – both included here – comes his debut album. Kudos to Smith for taking his time. It’s certainly full of guitars and tones that will move his already staunch fanbase. And that, in his upfront discussions of his mental health challenges (see: 'Sertraline (Where Am I Now)’), will speak to them, too.

The rub with that is that the sad-boy-with-guitar confessional already feels overwhelmed – by the female power-pop of Rodrigo, Carpenter, Roan et al – and overdone. Overdone but not over, clearly: Lewis Capaldi is still packing them in, and Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide had blockbuster sales upon its release in April. But for all the undoubted accomplishment of Smith’s songwriting in My Mess, My Heart, My Life., it's hard to escape the feeling that this is a dated sound. Yes, already.

Again, to be clear, the songcraft is on point. The confessional ‘My Mess’ is a huge, emphatic opener, based around notes from his therapy sessions, that will surely raise the curtains on the 28-year-old’s increasingly large concerts. You can’t argue with ‘Stargazing’, nor the billion streams it achieved within 18 months. ‘Hold Me in the Dark’, Smith’s rich and resonant vocals buoyed by fleets of backing vocalists, has a chorus to balance your pints on. ‘Stay (If You Wanna Dance)’ hits the sweet spot between Coldplay and Kahan – and that is, for sure, commercially speaking, still hugely sweet. ‘Grandma’s Place’ is a lovely, hymnal blues that honours his childhood, familial safe place.

But elsewhere, overfamiliarity breeds meh. The boyband dance-lite of ‘Mary’s Song’ is less blues than Blue. ‘Drive Safe’, which features Niall Horan, and ‘Nice to Meet You’ are firmly in the tradition of the 2010s’ “Stomp Clap Hey” era, as Vice recently witheringly described it, those neo-folk singalongs embodied by Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men etc. Altogether now: “woooaahhhh…”

The banjo-and-syncopated beats of the closing ‘Gold’ can’t escape that dread hand either. Worst of all, ‘Dublin Lights’ out-Sheerans Sheeran in its craven-ness, and is what happens when you instruct ChatGPT, “fiddly-diddly Guinness drinking song, but make it even more cringe”.

Say it again: great songwriting and great vocals make for a decent candidate for album of the year. But that year is 2024. Which, in these fleet-footed musical times, is an aeon ago.