Simon Ward Music

home | performance | simon and the island | songwriting | contact

"Simon Ward paired musings on failure with sunny chords and bright acoustics; messages of despair came in the form of enticingly singable hooks” – Entertainment Weekly

read full bio

With over a billion streams worldwide, Simon Ward is a songwriter who’s lyrical inspiration floods in from real life experience, running the gamut from darkness to light, tragedy to joy, feeling lost to finding home. The roadmap of his work offers a ride that can be smooth sailing one minute, a jolt from hitting a speedbump the next, to turning the corner and majestically soaring to the highest crest; and sometimes that’s all within one track.

Ward is the principal songwriter for The Strumbellas, a scruffy six-piece outfit, who over the span of the last decade have released four full length albums that traverse the musical universe from funeral pop, goth folk, alt country, indie rock to mainstream alternative rock.

With Ward at the helm, The Strumbellas’ music has broken through, earning critical acclaim and commercial success including two JUNO Awards – Best Contemporary Roots Album (2014) and Single of the Year – Spirits (2017), Songwriter of the Year awards (SOCAN, CMW Indies), Best New Rock / Alt Rock Artist (iHeartRadio Awards), and sales for Spirits reaching 3x platinum status in Italy and Canada, and gold status in America, Germany, France and Belgium.

Simon’s solo project, Simon and the Island, released a self-titled album of sad lane songs in 2021 on Ward’s own imprint, Windsurfer Records (licensed to Glassnote Music worldwide ex-Canada) which Variance Magazine proclaimed, “Ward pulls us in with each and every word” and Earmilk articulated perfectly by remarking “creating music with so much heart”.

His candor is reflected across confessional lyrics and raw, sweeping soundscapes that put emotional honesty at the fore. That open heartedness has always been a hallmark of Ward’s songwriting, as well as exquisite prose that illustrates the things that are the hardest to articulate…” – Montecristo Magazine

Big House, a song penned by Ward for his children, was a feature track on Splash’N Boots’ album, Heart Parade, which won the 2021 JUNO for Best Children’s Album

In 2022 Ward appeared on Armin van Buuren / R3HAB’s track, Love We Lost, as the feature vocalist. The song, co-written by Ward, has over 20 million streams and charted on radio at HOT AC and CHR, and went Top 10 at Top 40 in Canada.

“The energy and uplifting vibes are exactly what you would expect from this trio of gifted artists and the track is one that sweeps you up and in almost immediately” - LA ON LOCK

Ward’s music has been licensed across the synch world including: Google Pixel, T Mobile, Advil, Coca-Cola, A Million Little Things, CNN, Orange (Romania), Skoda (Italy), Universal Pictures’ Welcome To Marwen and All My Life, Netflix Original The Half Of It, Open Road’s Midnight Sun, The Sims soundtrack, American Idol, CBS’ Bull, Hallmark Channel, NFL football, Fox Sports, Sportsnet, CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada and more.