“Whenever I’m not working, I’m busking,” Aaron Smith tells Apple Music. “I like to take songs out straight from sessions and test them out on the streets. Being able to see how much cash a song has taken is pretty useful, too.” Sadly for the people of Glasgow, Smith’s debut EP should severely curtail his busking opportunities. It’s a carefully curated set introducing an extraordinary voice paired with exquisite heartbreak pop. Some lazy Lewis Capaldi comparisons might crop up, but this is a very different artist. “Lewis is such a lovely guy and he’s worked his arse off,” Smith says. “But I want to do my own thing. Lewis is very out there as a person, but that’s not really my thing. If you see me play, I just let the music do the talking and I’d like a sense of privacy. I don’t want to be very out there on social media. I just want to do my thing and then bugger off at the end of it, you know?” Here, Smith walks you through his EP, track by track. Better Man “I wrote this with [UK songwriter and producer] Jonny Hockings and it was another one that came together in just a couple of hours. It was quite organic. We were both hung over when we wrote, so were able to relate to each other. It’s a song about my girlfriend and a time in my life when I was getting fucked up a lot. I was in such a bad place from my last relationship and I was going out drinking constantly—just because my anxiety was really bad. I suppose it still is, but I’ve learnt to manage that a bit better. The whole purpose of the song is to prove to her that I will give you what you deserve.” In My Way “I was in a relationship but it wasn’t working. It was very suffocating and I wasn’t able to live my life because it was so intense. The song tries to see both sides, but in order to do that, I had to get away and cut myself off. Despite everything I’ve just said, I don’t think this one’s too intense. It’s a nice calm song. I think the EP needed that. It’s a lovely clichéd love song. Well, a ‘I fucking hate you and I need to go’ kind of love song.” Unspoken “So here’s the scenario I had in my head when writing the song: There’s a girl and a boy in a restaurant and the girl goes to kiss the guy, but he freezes and just thinks about everything running through his mind. He doesn’t know if he can go in for the kiss. I wrote the song with Aqualung [UK artist and songwriter Matt Hales] on a day where he was incredibly hung over. We had never met before and it was just so weird. I was really ‘Fuck, what I am doing in this place’ and he had to apologize for how hung over he was. So we went and had a drink and chilled and got to know each other. We came back to the studio and he just started playing these incredible chords which sparked the first verse and I was suddenly like, ‘Fuck, that’s cool.’” Better Than You Loved Me “This is a quite deep song for me. For most of my life I’ve had issues with my family, and I had a lot going with that at the time I wrote it with Frances [Sophie Frances Cooke, UK singer-songwriter]. It all just flew out, all these lyrics and melodies. It was like the song was meant to be. It was finished in two hours. It was surprising to me that I managed to open up so much, but I’ve listened to Frances for years and really look up to her as a musician, so I just found that it was really easy to open up to her. It reminds me of how I’m out of a very difficult situation. I have closure, almost.”