"All Is Love (featuring Zoë Keating)," the first solo material from Curt Smith since 2008, is to be released via his own KOOK Media and will be available in digital format from iTunes, thesixtyone.com, CD Baby, and Amazon MP3.
From curtsmithofficial.com: Smith met guest artist Zoë Keating online. "I was looking for a cellist to play on the track and heard about Zoë through Twitter. I watched a few of her performances on YouTube and thought she was fantastic and innovative." He sent her the in-progress tracks, and a month or so later she hand-delivered her cello parts to a Tears For Fears concert outside of San Francisco. The two now plan to perform in concert, as a double bill, in March of this year.
"All Is Love," began life as a demo track for a television pilot theme song (the original version, called "Halfway Home," streams on Smith's website). While the pilot didn't get picked up, Smith liked the musical idea he'd begun, and reworked it with longtime collaborator Charlton Pettus. In a departure from his usual lyrical themes of longing and loss, "All Is Love"'s anthemic chorus ("When every mother's loving every son / When all is love, there'll be love for everyone") looks forward with hope to a time of peace and calm. "I was inspired by the 2008 U.S. presidential election" says Smith "The verses are about the negativity of all the advertising, whilst the chorus invokes the inspiration I felt about positive change."
Like Smith's previous solo effort Halfway, pleased, he's releasing "All Is Love" under a Creative Commons license. The license Smith uses allows others to freely share, perform, and remix his work, so long as the uses are non-commercial, Smith is credited, and any derivative works carry the same license. "I'm a big fan of Creative Commons," Smith says. "It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. It affords you the opportunity to set the ground rules of how people can use your music upfront."
Background vocalists on "All Is Love" include singer-songwriters Michael Wainwright (who opened for Tears for Fears on its 2009 U.S. tour) and Jason Joseph, as well as Pettus' daughter Georgica. Charlton Pettus and Smith share writing and production credits.
Smith plans to play several Los Angeles-area solo gigs in 2010, working around a busy schedule of Tears for Fears concert tours taking place in Australia, New Zealand, southeast Asia and the U.S. East Coast. He'll continue to release new tracks as he completes them, with the possibility of compiling them into an album when he's got enough material.
