Jo's Picks Of The Month is a regular monthly contribution, published exclusively in the Sound Café magazine with the intention of providing you with information on artists that you might not have heard of, but I think are truly worth exploring further.
MYLES SMITH
Myles Smith is an English Singer-songwriter. He is 26 years old. Raised in Bedfordshire, a very diverse community. As his interest grew in music, he bought a guitar and learned how to play. He started doing open mic, focusing on covers by Ed Sheeran, Marcus Mumford and Chris Martin. Smith began posting on Tik Tok in August 2020. His acoustic cover of The Neighbourhood's "Sweater Weather" went viral in 2022, leading to its full release in February 2023. The online success led to a record deal with Sony's RCA Records, which led to "You Promised A Lifetime" debut EP. This started off his professional career. He has since accumulated over 50 million streams on Spotify.
"Stargazing" was released in May 2024. It is written by Smith, Jesse Fink, and Peter Fenn. The song has a theme of "self discovery and introspection" with Myles describing the inspiration in the idea of life long love. In Stockwood Park in Myles' hometown of Luton, he performed on the BBC Music Introducing Stage at the Radio 1 Big Weekend in May 2024, this was his first festival performance. This BBC event is a platform for unsigned, undiscovered, and under the radar UK music talent.
Please check out Myles Smith and do some "Stargazing". Hope you like it.
CHAPPELL ROAN
Chappell Roan (Kayleigh Rose Amstutz) is 26 years old, an American singer-songwriter from Missouri. Her stage name is in honour of her grandfather Dennis K. Chappell, who died of brain cancer in 2016. Her aesthetic is heavily influenced by drag queens, and her music and performing style has been described as "campy".
In September 2017 she released an EP titled School Nights through Atlantic Records. In 2018, Roan moved from her parents home to Los Angeles, where she lived openly as a queer woman, feeling "overwhelmed with complete love and acceptance", allowing her to begin "writing songs as the real [her].
In 2020 Roan started working with songwriter and producer Dan Nigro, shortly after, Roan released "Pink Pony Club '' which is a "hard left turn" from School Nights. The Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood was the inspiration for the song. The song expressed her desire to become a go go dancer, stating, "truthfully, I'm not confident enough to do that, so I wrote a song about it". Atlantic dropped Roan in August 2020, her boyfriend of 4 years dropped her in the same week, so she spent the next two years working as a production assistant as well as a barista and nanny to support herself. A year after "Pink Pony Club" was released, it was described as "the Song of the Summer 2021" , calling it a "synthy infectious bangarang", by Vulture. By August 2022, the song had been streamed more than 10 million times on Spotify.
In February 2023 Roan embarked on the Naked in North America Tour. Inspired by Orville Peck, Roan chose to book drag queens as openers for the tour. Jem Aswad described it as a concert where "you recognize when a new-ish artist's career is about to blast off" similar to Lorde in 2013 and Billie Eillish in 2019. In May 2023, the release of "Red Wine Supernova '' with accompanying music video, was praised by Rolling Stone as "A queer hookup anthem".
Roan opened for Olivia rodrigo's Guts World Tour, this bumped up her streams by 34%, with also being a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In April 2024, Roan released the single "Good Luck, Babe!", described as "the first song of the next chapter". The song speaks about heterosexuality, and a woman trying to deny her romantic feelings for Roan and women in general.
Praised by Billboard as a "well-deserved breakthrough", the song received 7 million streams in the first week and listed as top 10 by Spotify. Roan performed at Coachella later in the month, and her listeners increased by more than 500% from February to April. Roan earned her fastest song to hit 100 million streams on the platform. Roan revealed she had declined an invitation from the White House to perform for that year's Pride Celebration. During the Governors Ball Music Festival, Roan stated "we want justice and Freedom for all. When you do that, that's when I'll come". Roan continued doing festivals with increasing popularity, moving from smaller stages to larger ones to handle the crowd. In Raleigh, North Carolina in June 2024, Roan spoke to the crowd about dealing with her rapid increase in popularity, stating "I think my career is just kind of going really fast and it's really hard to keep up. I'm just being honest, I'm having a hard time today. This is all I've ever wanted--it's just heavy sometimes". Sounds like quite a ride to me, and very impressive that she never gave up on her dream.
Hope you enjoy, Good Luck, Babe!
"My collection of K-TELS playing on my portable candle record player is where my relationship with and love for music of all genres began. It continued throughout my life, from going to concerts through to my more recent luck in being involved in an album production, from studio recording to mastering. WOW! What an experience, and from it I've gained an even greater respect and appreciation for what it takes to make great music!
Couple that with my air guitar acumen, and that of course makes me a consummate professional in bringing 'Jo's Picks Of The Month' to you.
All kidding aside my repertoire of songs is vast and what an honour it is to share my picks with the readers of The Sound Cafe Magazine!" - Jo.
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