Songfacts®:

• "My Mess" is Myles Smith's raw, confessional account of a turbulent upbringing, zeroing in on the kind of home where, as he puts it, "a word could start a war." He frames his adult insecurity as a direct inheritance from childhood trauma.
  
  "I wrote it from a place of trying to understand why I am the way I am... the indecision, the walls, the things I'm still unlearning. It's not polished, it's not perfect - it's just real," explained Smith. "This is where the story starts."
• "My Mess" shares DNA with other confessional songs about emotional untidiness; from Lorde's "Liability" (a piano ballad about internalizing the idea that you're simply too much for the people around you) to Kesha's "Praying" (which turns trauma into something closer to exorcism than closure). Where those songs direct their reckoning outward, Smith looks inward, tracing the indecision and people-pleasing of adulthood directly back to the fractured home where they were first learned.
• Smith wrote "My Mess" with his regular collaborators Peter Fenn and Jesse Fink, alongside Romans, Steph Jones and Griff Clawson.
  
  Romans (real name Roman Campello) is a British singer-songwriter and topliner who has written for acts including Lewis Capaldi ("Someone You Loved"), Ed Sheeran ("The Joker And The Queen") and Shaboozey ("Good News").
  
  American songwriter Steph Jones' other credits include Sabrina Carpenter's "Nonsense" and "Espresso." She also contributed towards Smith's collaboration with Niall Horan, "Drive Safe."
  
  Griff Clawson is a UK songwriter and producer with credits across the alt-pop world, including Rosé's "Call It The End."
• "My Mess" is part of Myles Smith's debut album, My Mess, My Heart, My Life. The bridge repeats the album's full title - "This is my mess, my heart, my life" - effectively making the track the mission statement for everything that follows.
  
  "It was always meant to be an honest one," said Smith. "Something that brings you into the world of my album… properly. No filter, no pretending." And after seeing the fan response - people telling him they cried for the first time in years and felt seen - he added: "That connection. That feeling. That's why I do this."
• "My Mess" co-writer Peter Fenn strums the chiming mandolin that runs through "My Mess." Fenn also plays the piano, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer, and sings background vocals.