Zachary Holt Smith (born 1951) is an American musician, songwriter, technologist, and producer. [1] [2] [3]
Zachary Holt Smith (born 1951) is an American musician, songwriter, technologist, and producer. [1] [2] [3]
Smith was born in 1951 and grew up in Westport, Connecticut. [4] [5] He attended the University of Colorado, where he met Candy and David Givens, Bobby Birge, and Otis Taylor, members of the ABC recording-artist group Zephyr. After Tommy Bolin left the band for a solo career, Smith joined and played shows as lead guitarist. [6] [7]
Smith moved to NYC after college, where he met Paul Shaffer, whose role as bandleader on Saturday Night Live had ended. Shaffer and Smith organized a cover band with other musicians, including Dee Murray and Davey Johnstone of the Elton John Band. At this time, Smith began actively writing and recording songs. [4] [8] [1]
In 1981, Smith formed Scandal. [4] [3] The first release was a self-titled EP, which quickly became a best-seller and led to a second album, Warrior , which went gold and then platinum. [9] Scandal was featured on Bands Reunited (MTV) and participated in a VH1 Summer Tour in 2012, along with Rick Springfield, Eddie Money, Loverboy, and The Go-Go's. Smith wrote or co-wrote most of the band's hits, [10] including "Goodbye to You", "Love's Got a Line on You", and "Beat of a Heart". [11] [12]
After leaving the band, Smith began producing commercial work. [13] He won a 1990 Clio Award for writing the original lyrics and song for the long-running "The Fabric of Our Lives" campaign of Cotton Incorporated. [14] [15] The first network-TV spot, "One Day", featured a vocal performance by Richie Havens. Subsequent versions of the Cotton theme featured Aaron Neville, Zoey Deschanel, Miranda Lambert, and Jasmine Sullivan. [15] [16]
Smith moved to San Francisco in 1997, where he began working for Apple. [17] At Apple, he created music ecosystems used by iMovie, Clips, and Photos. He holds multiple patents for the technology he developed for Apple. [18]
In 2022, Smith began a songwriting collaboration with Tamsin Smith, a poet and the founding president of Bono's (RED), under the name Wundercat. [19] They released a debut album Two Sided Fortune in 2023, followed by a double LP Digging in 2025. [20] Wundercat performs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. [3]
Smith has four children. His eldest, Zachary Cole Smith, is the founder, frontman, and principal songwriter for the band DIIV. [13]