Matt Willis

Matt Willis biography

Matthew James Willis (born 8 May 1983) is an English singer-songwriter. He found fame as a founding member of the band Busted.

Early years

Willis was born Matthew James Willis in Tooting, London, later moving to East Molesey, Surrey, where he grew up, and later moved to Woking, Surrey.

Willis has an older brother, Darren; their parents split up when Matt was three years old. His mother later remarried and had his half-sister, Amanda, who is an Ambassador for a charity called Whizz-Kidz. Willis has had three different last names legally whilst growing up; Willis after his birth father, this was changed to Woods after his parents split and later changed to Sargent after his mother married her now current husband.

Willis has made it clear that he was a "problem" child, regularly sneaking out of the house by shimmying down drain pipes. He also as a child suffered from brittle bone disease, tunnel vision, asthma and hyperactivity problems.

Willis attended Woking High School after being asked to leave his previous secondary school, before leaving to attend the independent fee-paying Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone, London, where he met his now close friends Lee Ryan, Tom Fletcher, Billie Piper, Jodi Albert, and Amy Winehouse who had openly said that she fancied Matt at school: "Yeah we all loved Matt at school. I fancied him, Everyone did."

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 immensely famous 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.

Solo career

Don't Let It Go To Waste

After a brief stint in rehab after the 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 management 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."

Second solo album

Matt 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 Matt'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 debut contained songs of a mature aspect but were still in the mould of his Busted days. He is producing the album himself along with a production team if things go wrong. He is also launching his own record 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, with a release date to be announced soon.

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