The warm, dizzying realization that the person you've been searching for was right beside you all along
"Stargazing" captures one of love's most beautiful moments: the instant you stop searching because you realize what you've been looking for is already here. It's not a dramatic revelation — it's quieter than that. It's looking at someone you've known for a while and suddenly seeing them differently, as if the light shifted and revealed something that was always there.
The stargazing metaphor works on multiple levels. Literally, it's two people lying somewhere looking up at the sky — one of the most intimate, unguarded things you can do with another person. Stars make you feel small but connected, like you're part of something bigger. That's exactly how early love feels: vast, humbling, and impossibly beautiful.
But stargazing also means dreaming — looking at something far away and imagining what could be. The song plays with the tension between looking outward at distant dreams and looking beside you at what's real and present. The narrator spent time gazing at stars — at possibilities, at other horizons — before realizing the most extraordinary thing in his universe was the person next to him.
There's a thread of gentle regret woven through the song too. The repeated idea of "wasted time" suggests the narrator wishes he'd recognized this love sooner. He wasn't blind to it — it was more that he wasn't ready to see it. That's a feeling many people know: the slow dawning that someone who's been in your life quietly, patiently, without fanfare is actually the person you've been looking for.
Myles Smith wrote the song in Malibu in January 2024, looking out over the ocean at sunset during his first trip there. He'd just signed with RCA Records, and there was a sense of everything coming together — career, place, feeling. He's said he loves the idea that the person you fall in love with has been there your whole life. "Stargazing" is a song about that exact realization.
What it means: He's been dreaming, looking upward and outward, searching for something without knowing exactly what. The act of stargazing is both literal and a metaphor for romantic longing.
Why it matters: It establishes the song's central image — a person looking at the sky for answers who finally looks beside him instead.
What it means: The person he's falling for wasn't a stranger or a dramatic arrival — she was already in his life, present the whole time, waiting to be noticed.
Why it matters: This is the emotional turning point of the song. The best love stories aren't always about meeting someone new — sometimes they're about finally seeing someone who was always there.
What it means: Now that he's recognized this love, he refuses to let any more time pass without acting on it. No more hesitation, no more looking elsewhere.
Why it matters: It transforms the regret about wasted time into urgency. The past is gone, but the present is happening right now — and he's choosing to be fully in it.
What it means: Despite all the stars in the sky — all the possibilities, all the other people — she is the only thing that holds his attention. Everything else fades.
Why it matters: It's the emotional resolution of the stargazing metaphor. He started by looking at thousands of stars. He ends by seeing only one.
Myles Smith grew up in Luton, England — a diverse, working-class town about 30 miles north of London. He was raised in a British Jamaican family and grew up listening to everything from pop-punk to hip-hop to singer-songwriters like Ed Sheeran and Marcus Mumford. He taught himself guitar and piano, and by twelve was performing at local open-mic nights.
His path to "Stargazing" ran through TikTok, where he began posting covers in 2022. His warm voice and acoustic style quickly attracted a following, which led to a deal with Sony Music. But "Stargazing" — written in Malibu with songwriters Jesse Fink and Peter Fenn — was the song that broke him internationally. It topped Billboard's Pop Airplay, Adult Pop Airplay, and Alternative Airplay charts simultaneously, making Smith the first British solo debut artist to reach number one on all three radio formats. By December 2025, the song had surpassed one billion Spotify streams.
Smith won the BBC Introducing Artist of the Year award for 2024 and received the BRIT Rising Star Award in 2025. His story — from Luton open-mic nights to Malibu songwriting sessions to a billion streams — is a testament to the power of a genuine voice in an era of overproduction. "Stargazing" works because it sounds like exactly what it is: a young man with a guitar, sitting under the stars, realizing he's in love.
| Word / Phrase | Meaning | Example Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| stargazing | Looking at stars; figuratively, dreaming or being lost in romantic wonder | "She spent the evening stargazing, thinking about what the future might hold." |
| right there all along | Present the entire time, but unnoticed or unappreciated until now | "The answer to the problem was right there all along — I just couldn't see it." |
| waste another moment | To let time pass without doing something meaningful — here, without acting on love | "Life is short. Don't waste another moment on things that don't matter." |
Myles Smith is a British singer-songwriter from Luton, England, born in 1998 to a British Jamaican family. Self-taught on guitar and piano, he broke through via TikTok covers before signing with Sony Music. "Stargazing" made him one of the biggest new artists of 2024-2025, earning him the BRIT Rising Star Award and a billion Spotify streams — all built on a simple foundation of an honest voice and an acoustic guitar.
"Stargazing" is built from some of the most useful English vocabulary for talking about love and time — "right there all along," "waste another moment," and "stargazing" itself are phrases that come up constantly in conversation, books, and other songs. But the song's greatest gift is its simplicity: a warm voice, an acoustic guitar, and the oldest realization in the world — that the most extraordinary thing in your life might be the person sitting next to you. For anyone learning English, this is a perfect song because every word is clear, every image is vivid, and the feeling is universal.