For someone who has spent most of his life in the spotlight, Myles Erlick is surprisingly interested in the moments when nobody is watching.
There’s the Myles Erlick millions of people know from social media — the charismatic performer with more than 3.3 million followers across platforms, the actor and dancer whose career began on Broadway and eventually carried him to the big screen. Then there’s the Myles Erlick sitting in his Nashville studio, writing songs about falling in love, learning to trust and figuring out where all that relentless ambition is supposed to take him next.
Today (September 4), the JUNO Award-winning Canadian-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter, producer and actor is officially opening the next chapter of his career with his debut full-length album HANDCRAFTED, which is a project that feels like the most complete introduction to who he is when the cameras aren’t rolling.
“I feel like everything’s kind of led to this point in my life,” Erlick told Celeb Secrets exclusively in a recent one-on-one interview, reflecting on the road that brought him to his first album. “Everything just aligned right, and it just was the right time to do it.”
And if the summer leading into HANDCRAFTED is any indication, “the right time” might be an understatement.
After announcing the 14-track project in July alongside the intimate country-rock ballad “Dyin’ In This Living Room,” Erlick kept the momentum going with the release of “Little Bit More,” a romantic, high-energy duet with rising country star Erin Kinsey that arrived Aug. 14 as the final preview of the album. Now, with HANDCRAFTED officially arriving this week, Erlick is moving from teasing this new era to fully living in it.
Born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, just outside Toronto, Erlick grew up surrounded by entertainment. His family was involved in the industry, while his grandmother introduced him to classical piano, guitar and drums. Music wasn’t something he discovered later in life — it was woven into his childhood.
Erlick broke out in the title role of Broadway’s Billy Elliot the Musical, launching a career that would eventually take him from the stage to television and film, including a role in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and, most recently, the Amazon Prime series Motorheads.
But even as acting and dancing continued to shape his career, music was never far away.
“I grew up playing music, dancing, singing, acting, all of the above,” he explained. “It’s all I’ve known since the beginning, since I can remember.”
That background helps explain why HANDCRAFTED doesn’t sound like an artist trying to figure out what kind of performer he wants to be. He has spent years studying the craft from virtually every angle.
Myles’ influences stretch from Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones to Chuck Berry, B.B. King and Bob Fosse, but country music has always held a particularly important place in his musical DNA. His grandmother introduced him to the genre at a young age, exposing him to artists like George Strait and Alan Jackson. His first concert, though? KISS.
The result is a sound that doesn’t fit neatly inside one box. The 28-year-old describes it as country-rock and rock ‘n’ roll infused with the other genres that have influenced him along the way — a combination that makes HANDCRAFTED feel both classic and current. Now, he’s taking all of that knowledge and putting it into a project that is unmistakably his.
“I listened to everything growing up, and I studied everything,” he said. “I just have a huge appreciation for a lot of things, music to performing.”
The title of the album came from a conversation with his mom, but the meaning behind it is much bigger than a clever name. Recorded at Castle Recording Studios in Franklin, Tennessee, HANDCRAFTED was built around live musicianship, organic production and an intentionally old-school approach to recording. Rather than chasing whatever sound might be trending at the moment, Erlick and his team focused on creating something tangible and timeless.
“Everything by hand,” he told Celeb Secrets. “From the musicians we brought in, from how we recorded it to how we mixed and mastered it to the production. Everything about it was real, raw and done, you know, the old-school way.”
That philosophy became the album’s identity — and eventually its title. When Erlick explained how intentionally the project had been created, his mother immediately knew what it needed to be called.
“I was immediately like, ‘100%, that’s it,’” he said.
That hands-on approach also extends to the people behind the boards. Myles teamed with Nashville legends Dann Huff and David Huff, working alongside the brothers through their Huff Co. label venture with ONErpm. Rather than stripping away the instincts Erlick had developed through years of producing and recording his own music, the Huffs challenged him to expand them.
“They didn’t want to take away from how I did things,” Erlick said. “They just wanted to help elevate it and bring in their expertise and help me kind of just reach new limits.”
The album also brought Myles into the studio with an all-star roster of Nashville musicians and songwriters, including Derek Wells, Rob McNelly, Chris McHugh, David Dorn, Justin Schipper and Mark Hill, alongside writers Aaron Eshuis, Neil Medley and Mike Walker, among others. For Erlick, those sessions were less intimidating than they were surreal.
“I was just like a kid in a candy store,” he admitted.
At its heart, HANDCRAFTED is a love story. Not the perfectly polished, Hallmark version of love, either. Across its songs, Erlick explores the rush of falling for someone, the vulnerability that comes with letting your guard down and the realization that sometimes the biggest risk is allowing yourself to actually be happy.
The album opens the door with “Hell of a Start,” before moving through tracks like “Gimme Love,” “Past Life,” “2AM Playlist,” “Do or Die,” “Better Bring Boots,” “25 To Life,” “Sounds Like You,” “Little Bit More,” “Fight or Flight,” “All I Needed” and “Where My Running Ends.”
Each one captures a different emotional snapshot of the past two years of Erlick’s life.
“Gimme Love” delivers the rush of instant attraction. “Past Life” plays with the feeling of meeting someone who somehow already feels familiar. “2AM Playlist” transforms the songs you already know into the soundtrack of a new relationship, while “Do or Die” dives deeper into what it means to trust someone completely.
Then there is “Dyin’ In This Living Room,” perhaps one of the clearest examples of Myles’ ability to turn a small, ordinary moment into something cinematic. The song was inspired by watching his girlfriend simply sitting in their living room — a seemingly insignificant moment that suddenly felt enormous. It’s a fitting metaphor for the entire album: take something real, sit with it, and make it mean something.
Erlick says that’s naturally how he writes.
“I always start with the music first,” he explained, crediting the classical piano training he received from his grandmother for teaching him to think in chords and progressions before words. From there, he allows real life to determine where the story goes.
“I always use real-life experiences with that, and it just happens, you know, quick and naturally for me.”
That approach is particularly evident on “Fight or Flight,” the only song on the album he wrote entirely by himself. The track is deeply personal, written about his relationship with his girlfriend and fellow songwriter Heather Carpenter. In fact, Erlick describes the entire album as something of a love letter to her — but “Fight or Flight” required him to tell that story alone.
When he eventually played it for Carpenter, her reaction confirmed that he’d said exactly what he needed to say. “She bawled,” he recalled.
With more than 3.3 million followers, Myles understands the strange relationship between creativity and the algorithm better than most. Sometimes, the projects he spends hours making don’t connect the way he expects. Other times, the simplest clip — like an acoustic performance filmed on his couch — takes off.
That realization has helped him find a balance between giving fans the content they love and staying true to the artist he wants to be. And that’s ultimately what HANDCRAFTED gives his audience: the chance to see what exists beyond the viral moment.
At 28, Erlick has already lived several different career lives. But rather than looking back at Broadway, film, social media or music as separate chapters, he sees them as pieces of the same journey. When asked what the young boy who first stepped onto a Broadway stage would think of him now, Erlick summed it up in one word: “Proud.”
Proud that he stuck with it. Proud that he didn’t allow negative comments or career lows to change his trajectory. Proud that he continued to chase the next thing. Now, that next thing is HANDCRAFTED — an album made with the people he loves, the musicians he admires and the sounds that have followed him since childhood.
Ultimately, Myles doesn’t need listeners to understand every chapter that came before HANDCRAFTED. He simply wants them to find something in these songs that feels like their own.
“I’d love for the fans and people to leave with after listening to the album is to just simply hopefully be heard, or find a song that they can relate to and they can hear themselves in,” he said. “Maybe it’s a song that makes them cry or maybe it’s a song that makes them laugh, or it’s a song they can put on in the car and bump and vibe out to.”
“If they’re doing any of that, then I’ve done my job.”
For more on Myles Erlick and HANDCRAFTED, make sure to watch our full interview below. Don’t forget to let us know your favorite song off the album by either leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post or by sliding into our DMs at @celebsecretscountry.
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