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Dai Smith - Songwriter

Dai is a passionate songwriter, always striving to create simply amazing songs. His song writing stock is well proven - having written songs which have led to record and publishing deals with Sony, ATV Music, Ryko (USA) and Warner / Korova.


Writing across the whole spectrum of musical genres and styles, Dai has worked with a diverse range of artists and co-writers. He writes for solo artists, groups, even musicals and across a range of instrumentation. His songwriting credits are musically diverse and varied but always inspirational and commercially strong.


A particular strength is his ability to write across different genres of music; he’s successfully written (both alone and collaboratively) across pop, rock, country, indie, world and dance music. Dai partly attributes this to his vastly diverse musical influences and personal listening tastes….he loves everything from Aretha Franklin to Queens of the Stone Age with a bit of The Beach Boys and Timbaland thrown in for good measure. Basically he just loves a damn good song, whatever the genre. And a good song has the ability to create, evoke and move emotions – something he aims to achieve in his own songwriting – be that in a euphoric, hopeful, melancholy or downright gut-bustingly uplifting way.


An experienced musician and performer in his own right, Dai plays guitar, bass and keys but has also been known to pick up a variety of string and percussion instruments to achieve the sounds and feel he’s after when songwriting. Having been in the music industry all his life, he’s also fortunate to have an address book stuffed full of skilled musicians who can (and do) all bring their own musical talents to a song when needed.


Left to his own devices, Dai is a prolific solo songwriter but he especially loves the process of working collaboratively, whether with other songwriters or artists. He explains;



“Being able to bounce ideas off each other is really great…but the best bit is seeing my ideas meld with other people’s and the end product being so much more than the sum of all its parts – the song really is the winner in collaborative songwriting”


In 2000 Dai co-wrote a song with Mike Terry and Tim Woodcock called ‘Just Hold On’ which went on to become a top 20 hit for the hugely successful band Toploader.


Dai has also co-written with a host of other noteworthy songwriters, including; Paul Stacey, musician and producer who played guitar for Madonna/Oasis/Finn Brothers and was a member of The Lemon Trees with Guy Chambers; Pascal Gabriel, Producer/Songwriter who wrote for Dido; Katherine Davies, solo artist signed to Atlantic Records who has also written for Randy Crawford; Robert Hodgson (Bobby Bluebell, songwriter, member of the ‘The Bluebells’ who’s written for Texas and many others and Simon Tauber.


Another song-writing collaboration started life around a kitchen table in Swansea, with Dai and 3 co-writers crafting songs with such startling harmonies that they would go on to be compared with The Eagles and Crosby, Stills & Nash. In the event the songs were of such high quality that they led the writers down the path of forming their own band, ‘The Storys’, and ultimately to a record deal with Warners / Korova and Ryko (USA) as well as to support slots with world class acts such as Elton John and Tom Jones.


Although he loved performing with the band, songwriting is in Dai’s soul and he left the band in 2008 to re-focus on doing what he loves best - songwriting and producing. Dai is currently working with various artists including a band enjoying wide UK airplay and on a musical film project.


Dai is happy to consider songwriting either independently for a specific project or artist, or collaboratively working with other writers or artists. If you are interested in working with him or would like to know more about how he writes, just get in touch; he’d love to hear from you.


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