Simon Curtis (born March 18, 1986) is an American actor and singer-songwriter from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He gained fame for playing Royce Du Lac in the Nickelodeon musical TV-movie Spectacular!. After releasing one extended play, Alter Boy, Curtis released his debut full-length studio album, 8Bit Heart in 2010.
The album was recorded in a "tiny basement in the hills of West Virginia" with Jeff Wells. Curtis chose to release 8Bit Heart for free on his official website after meeting the goal of 8000 followers on Twitter (@simoncurtis).
The album was well-received by the pop community and has been downloaded over 150,000 times in the 2 weeks following its release.Curtis has managed to do all this without the help of a manager or record label. He is currently hoping to get signed very soon and is promoting his album to various music blogs.
I don't see why Simon Curtis is signed to a label now, because I think it is a great concept album full of electropop, electronica and dance tracks with a slight "8-bit" influence to them. The tracks are all dance-able, which is always a plus in my book.
I especially love the use of references in some of Curtis' songs. For instance, in "Diablo" (a song recently used to end Michael Buckley's YouTube videos), Curtis references Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" ("Here's the thing, yeah we started out friends/But this is not a Kelly Clarkson song, and not how it ends") and Britney Spears' "If U Seek Amy" ("Oh baby, baby, does she take a piece of lime/For the drink that I'ma buy her/Oh wait, this song isn't mine"). In "Beat Drop", a clip from Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" was used as a backing vocals on the last line of the second verse.
The stand-out track for me from the album is "Super Psycho Love". With its slick vocals, hard beats and sick lyrics ("Aim, pull the trigger/Feel the pain getting bigger/Go insane from the bitter feeling/Trippin' super psycho love"), I don't see why this album is making waves in the mainstream.
Of course it may be hard for someone who made it through Nickelodeon (or shows and channels targeting toward kids and tweens in general), but Simon Curtis has hit the sweet spot with an album that is strikingly different and insanely addictive. This is one dude amongst others that we can take seriously as an artist. Thus, I give 8Bit Heart...
4/5
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