Matt Hales
Matt Hales
Aqualung
Second Chance! This doodle, originally auctioned in 2010, was generously re-donated by the winner.
Matt Hales, better known as Aqualung, is an English singer and songwriter best known in the UK for his song Strange and Beautiful, which was featured on a television advertisement for Volkswagen's New Beetle in the summer of 2002. It went on to become a Top 10 hit in the UK singles chart. In the U.S.A., Aqualung is known for the song Brighter Than Sunshine, which was used in the film A Lot Like Love starring Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher and in various television spots.
Matt began writing songs at the age of four and won a music scholarship at 16, and soon saw his classical symphony Life Cycle performed by a 60–piece orchestra. He began recording as Aqualung in 2002. His first two U.K. albums were combined to create his first U.S. release, Strange and Beautiful, which became a substantial stateside hit.
Matt demonstrated the flexibility of his songcraft by presenting his music in a variety of live formats, from solo piano performances to gigs with a four–piece band to concerts with a 17–person ensemble. The conflicting emotions generated by his unexpected mainstream success were reflected in 2007's Memory Man, a densely packed, largely electronic meditation on the disconnection and dislocation that he was feeling at the time. Those emotions left him unsure of whether he wanted to continue as a recording artist.
Eventually, Matt and his brother Ben began cutting unfussed, stripped–down recordings in his home studio, with little thought of releasing them to the public. The almost–accidental nature of 2008's Words and Music's birth cycle is consistent with the unpremeditated manner in which Aqualung first came into being, and Matt was happy to be returning to his D.I.Y. roots.
His songs have been used in multiple television shows such as Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, CSI: Miami, Cold Case, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Skins (UK), and Brothers and Sisters.
Magnetic North, released in April 2010, is his first album of all new material since he relocated from England to sunny Los Angeles. He wrote the 12 songs with his usual collaborators — his wife and his brother, Ben, but also worked with a few special co-writers, including Scottish band Blue Nile's legendary Paul Buchanan (on "36 Hours"). "If you want to know why I make the music I do, it has a lot to do with Blue Nile," Matt says. "The fact that we've become friends is a magical thing."
Aqualung.net - Official Website