Music Career
Willis first found fame in the music industry as one-third of the pop-rock band, Busted. The band's bassist and vocalist, Willis formed the band as well as co-writing almost all of their songs alongside Charlie Simpson, James Bourne and Tom Fletcher although the latter was a member of McFly. During their career, the trio became successful in Britain and began an upsurge of pop-punk popularity. They had several chart successes and released two studio albums, one live album and a compilation of their greatest hits, available in America. The band disbanded in 2005 due to Simpson leaving to pursue other projects.
After a brief stint in rehab after Busted split, Matt launched a solo career on Mercury Records, releasing singles in 2005 and 2006, "Up All Night", "Hey Kid", "Don't Let It Go to Waste", and a cover version of The Primitives song, "Crash" for the film Mr Bean's Holiday.
After appearing on ITV's "I'm A Celebrity...", Willis decided it was time for a change. Just as he was about to depart on his first solo UK Tour he sacked his agents of six years Prestige Management. This later came with the decision to leave his record label Mercury Records. "It's not a simple case of dropping an artist but just that we both felt we had reached a point where we could no longer move forwards."
Willis is in the studio recording his second album. He wrote on Twitter that some songs sound similar to Charlie Simpson's acoustic album Young Pilgrim and Willis's first album. The songs are going to sound different to his debut, Don't Let It Go to Waste, released in 2006, although his first effort contained more mature songs they were still in the mould of his Busted days. He is producing the album along with a production team and launching his own label to release the album on. He has working titles for songs such as "A Strange Dream", "Wondergirl" ("That song is not about girls" he wrote on Twitter) and "Tie Me Down". He also said that the album will be released sometime in 2012.
Willis wrote on Twitter that the album recording is in its first stages. He has announced that the second album may now be released in October or November 2012. Matt is currently starring as Fiyero the male lead in the hit musical Wicked.
Read more about this topic: Matt Jay
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