Curt Smith is a musician, singer and songwriter, who provided the lead vocals for some of the biggest hits (“Mad World,” “Pale Shelter,” “Everybody Wants to Rule The World,” “Advice for the Young At Heart”) of Tears For Fears, the group he co-founded with Roland Orzabal in 1981. TFF continues to perform worldwide, in addition to which Smith enjoys a flourishing solo career.
He released his latest single This Is Christmas in November 2010. His first original holiday song, it was featured in the season 5 holiday episode of the USA Network series Psych. In 2011, he’s returning to work on what hes calling, for now, The Social Media Project, a planned album-length work of collaborations with artists he meets or discovers via social media. The first two tracks, released in 2010, are All Is Love (featuring Zoe Keating) and Perfectly…Still (featuring Universal Hall Pass).
All three singles, along with Halfway, pleased, his 2008 solo album, were released under a Creative Commons license via Smith’s own KOOK Media imprint. Smith is a vocal proponent of Creative Commons, the nonprofit organization dedicated to making it easier for people to share their creative endeavors consistent with the rules of copyright.
Smith, who originally hails from Bath, England, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2007. After a decade in New York, he moved to Los Angeles in 1998 (where he still lives today with his wife and two daughters). In 2001 he began work on what was to become “Halfway, pleased,” but put the project on hold when he and Orzabal reformed Tears For Fears for 2004’s “Everybody Loves A Happy Ending.”
In July 2010, Smith debuted a live music web series, Stripped Down Live With Curt Smith, which he produced and hosted. In each episode, a band or musician played acoustic versions of their songs (the show was streamed live); Smith interviewed them between sets, as well as taking viewer questions via Skype and the show’s chat room. Smith’s guests on the series included The Daylights, Gary Jules, Fitz & The Tantrums, Carina Round, Matthew Sweet, Common Rotation, Chris Pierce, Hypnogaja, Peter Himmelman, Nightmare and The Cat, and more.
Smith embraces technology and social media, and is a sought-after speaker at conferences including TEDxHollywood and TEDxSanFrancisco, 140TC, the ITVFest, Creative Commons Salon, and OpenSource.com’s “Open Your World” Forum. His topics include artists’ use of social media, and the creative process as it applies to any endeavor.
The prolific Smith is currently working on compositions commissioned for television and film projects. He most recently scored the independent feature Meth Head, and contributed a song 2010 holiday episode of the USA Network series PSYCH. He also took a guest-starring turn in the Shawn 2.0 episode of the 5th season of PSYCH, which originally aired in the U.S. on September 1, 2010.
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