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Caton’s second Columbia single doubles as a shh Grammy campaign, landing just ahead of the Best New Artist eligibile deadline.
Miles Caton dropped his new single “Lean On” on Friday, his second release on Columbia Records since signing with the label earlier this year. The song is built around a specific kind of restraint: Caton has describe it as a late-night anthem for anyone who has loved someone enough to give them space while stay close enough to catch them if they fall. That tension between distance and closeness carries the whole track, and it’s Caton’s baritone doing most of the carry, warm and unhurried in a way that leaves plenty of room for the lyric to land.
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The video, directed by Robb5x and rel through Vevo, was shot around New York City, including Caton’s native Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, and casts streamer Yonna Jay as the love interest. It’s a low-key, walk-and-talk kind of visual, following the two through the city and onto the subway rather than reaching for anything more staged, which suits a song this unhurry. Yonna, a North Carolina-born content creator who built her following on Twitch and TikTok before moving into game streams and IRL content, brings his own audience into the frame, giving the rollout a reach beyond Caton’s existing music fanbase.
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“Lean On” follows “Don’t Hate Me,” Caton’s major-label debut single from March, and both songs are eligible for the 2027 Grammys, with the “Lean On” rel landing just a week ahead of next Friday’s eligibility deadline. Columbia has confirmed the label will campaign Caton for Best New Artist, and he was already sitting at No. 9 in Gold Derby’s Grammy predictions before this single even dropped, putting him within range of one of the category’s eight nomination slots when the list is announced November 16.
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The momentum traces back to Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s 2025 horror film, where Caton jured Sammie Moore, a blues prodigy known around his fictional Mississippi hometown as Preacher Boy. It was Caton’s first-ever acting role, and it earned him the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Young Performer along with a BAFTA Rising Star nomination. He also performed five songs on the film’s Grammy-winning soundtrack, including the Oscar-nominated “I Lied to You” and the end-credits duet “Last Time (I Seen the Sun)” alongside Alice Smith. That soundtrack work is arguable where most listeners first heard him sing, long before Columbia signed him as a solo artist this year.
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What “Lean On” makes clear is that Caton isn’t trying to separate the two sides of his career so much as let them run in parallel. The acting got him in the room; the voice is what’s keeping him there. Two singles into a Columbia deal, with a Grammy campaign already underway and a U.S. tour planned for later this year, Caton looks like an artist building a solo catalog on the same instrument that made Sinners impossible to ignore.
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