Sid Simons Releases New Single 'Wendy' Ahead of June Album Release

Sid Simons is announcing the June 23rd release of his sophomore LP Beneath the Brightest Smiles on Jullian Records. Along with the news, Simons is releasing the first single "Wendy."

Formerly known as GIRL SKIN, Brooklyn-based Simons is now performing and releasing music under his own name. The bulk of production and engineering on Beneath the Brightest Smiles was handled by Gordon Raphael (The Strokes' The Modern Age, This Is It and Room on Fire, Regina Spektor's Soviet Kitsch and Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories) with mixing by Dave Rowland (Post Malone, The-Dream, Pusha T, Ellie Goulding) at Mercy Sound Recording Studios (Blondie, Cher, Snoop Dogg, TV On The Radio, Yoko Ono, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato) in NYC's East Village.

Simons self-produced and engineered two tracks on Beneath the Brightest Smiles, while Paul Blackwell (Savants, Shilpa Ray, Zack Mexico) handled production, engineering, and mixing duties on the lead track "Wendy."

With "Wendy," Simons has created a boisterous track that blasts into the listener's consciousness with its call and response chorus. It is seemingly about a "topsy-turvy" woman" who "can't tell her left from right," but is really about Simons' GPS gone awry and "rerouting all the time." What better then but to give her a human name? The sassy track ends with the unforgettable rousing chorus, "She's got something on her mind" - which she certainly does.

"I wrote the song Wendy when I was on a road trip a few years ago and a relative of mine gave me an old GPS to take with me. It turned out the GPS had a mind of its own. It would just randomly tell us to drive off a highway or take a turn sending us into a lake. She even told us she loved us at one point. It was a bit of a love/hate relationship. We gave her the name Wendy and I wrote this song for her." - Sid Simons

A staple of the downtown NYC music scene community, Simons is a Brooklyn resident with a multicultural upbringing and global citizen background. Born in Portland, OR and raised in Australia, Simons moved to New York and later attended high school in Shanghai, road-tripped across the US solo, and moved back to New York solo to pursue music.

He and his versatile backing band have played NYC's Mercury Lounge numerous times as well as a run of college dates and another successful run of SXSW 2023 performances recently that included Simons' official showcase. His voice is reminiscent of T. Rex's Marc Bolan and his unique looks will recall Brian Jones, Jim Carroll and even Chloe Sevigny. With a dynamic onstage performance that invokes the spirit and swagger of Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger and Liam Gallagher, Simons is riveting.

Simons self-produced GIRL SKIN's critically acclaimed debut album Shade is on the other side that garnered coverage from NPR, American Songwriter, Paste, Flood, BrooklynVegan, Consequence, Hero, Document Journal, and Ponyboy.

Where the GIRL SKIN sound was primarily rooted in the folk-rock vein, Simons' influences on Beneath the Brightest Smiles include '60s soul and R&B, chameleon icon David Bowie, early aughts NYC trailblazers like the Strokes, Interpol and their UK counterparts The Libertines, and topped with some Americana flavor.

The underlying current and LP title Behind the Brightest Smiles is taken from the lyrics to one of the tracks where Simons observes "the saddest souls have the brightest smiles" and explains "a lot of people walk around with a specific face on, but there's something underneath it all."

Each song on Beneath the Brightest Smiles has a completely different feel and when the LP is released, the listener will hear all these influences that Simons has seamlessly combined into something perfectly modern.

Listen to the new single here: