Born in California, pop singer and songwriter Matt Simons gained recognition for his emotionally charged, piano-centered compositions. His debut album unexpectedly thrived on the Dutch pop charts, and by the mid-2010s he had secured airplay across much of Europe, including a chart-topping remix of “Catch & Release,” the title song from his sophomore effort. He maintained a stronger profile abroad than at home, a pattern that continued until he resurfaced in 2022 with the introspective Identity Crisis, his fourth full-length release.
Steeped in classical and jazz traditions and skilled on multiple instruments, the Palo Alto native relocated to New York to pursue a career crafting pop material. His reflective, keyboard-driven songs formed the core of Pieces, the self-released 2012 debut he promoted through online platforms and social media. To his astonishment, the project quickly attracted a loyal niche audience in the Netherlands; after a brief tour there, a well-known television writer began championing his work. The resulting buzz turned him into a modest star in Holland, where the album peaked at number 23. Bolstered by the single “With You,” he signed a European deal with Sony and concentrated his career on international markets while staying largely unnoticed in the United States.
Working with an expanded budget, Simons composed and tracked his next album alongside producers in Nashville, Los Angeles, and Holland. Issued in 2014, Catch & Release outperformed its predecessor on several European charts, propelled in part by a Dutch house remix of the title track that reached number one in Belgium the next year. Early in 2018 he delivered the upbeat pop single “We Can Do Better,” another European success that served as the cornerstone for his 2019 album After the Landslide, which again performed strongly in the Netherlands. During 2020 and 2021 he released a series of darker, confessional singles such as “Cold” and “Better Tomorrow,” both addressing his mental-health challenges and later featured on Identity Crisis, which arrived in 2022.
