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, with Eastern U.S. and Asia/Pacific tours in 2010, in addition to which Smith enjoys a flourishing solo career.
He released his latest single “Perfectly…Still (featuring Universal Hall Pass)” in August 2010; it’s the second song in a planned album-length project of collaborations with artists Smith meets or discovers via social media. Like its predecessor track “All Is Love (featuring Zo? Keating)” and “Halfway, pleased,” his 2008 solo album, it was 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 produces and hosts. In each episode, a band or musician plays acoustic versions of their songs (the show is streamed live via UStream); Smith interviews them between sets, as well as taking viewer questions via Skype and the show’s chat room.
Smith embraces technology and social media, and has become a sought-after speaker at conferences including TEDxHollywood and TEDxSanFrancisco, 140TC, and OpenSource.com’s “Open Your World” Forum.
The prolific Smith is currently working on compositions commissioned for television and film projects. He also took a guest-starring turn in “Shawn 2.0? episode of the 5th season of USA Network series PSYCH, which aired in the U.S. on September 1, 2010.
Updated September 2010
