Simonne Jones facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Simonne Jones
Simonne Jones playing Hydrogen Festival in Padova, Italy 2013
Background information
Birth name	Simonne Michelle Jones
Born	(1987-02-23) 23 February 1987 (age 38) Hollywood, California, USA
Genres	Pop electro pop alternative dark pop
Occupation(s)	Singer songwriter producer
Instruments	Vocals guitar keyboards bass percussion pump organ piano
Years active	2012–present
Labels	Universal Music Capitol Vertigo

Simonne Michelle Jones (born February 23, 1987) is a talented producer, singer, composer, model, and visual artist. She is based in Berlin, Germany.

Early Life and Learning

Simonne Jones was born and grew up in Hollywood, California. Her family background includes Cherokee and Barbadian roots. Her great-grandfather, Sir Frank Mortimer Maglinne Worrell, was a famous West Indies cricketer and senator.

Simonne started playing the piano very young. She taught herself to read music at age 3! By age ten, she was already writing her own songs. As a teenager, Simonne began to produce her own music. She also learned to play many different instruments, becoming a multi-instrumentalist.

When Simonne was 15, she finished high school by learning at home. A year later, at age 16, a modeling agency called Elite Model Management signed her. That same year, she moved across the country to start college. She went to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In 2008, she earned degrees in Biomedical research and Visual arts with high honors.

While in college, Simonne explored both science and art. She received a special grant to create an HIV awareness program in Ghana. She also worked on important research to understand diseases. At the same time, she showed her art for the first time in Florence, Italy, in 2007. She also had her first solo art show as a painter in Manhattan.

After college, Simonne was accepted into medical school. But she decided to follow her passion for music instead. She moved to Berlin to start a music career. As The Guardian newspaper wrote, Simonne chose to pursue both science and music in her life.

Music Career

Starting in Music (2012–2015)

Simonne Jones began her professional music journey in 2012. She was asked to perform at a fashion show for Diesel during Berlin Fashion Week. She became a student of the musician Peaches. Peaches encouraged Simonne to produce her own music and take charge of her recording sessions.

In 2013, Simonne was featured on the cover of Missy Magazine. That year, she was accepted into the Red Bull Music Academy in New York City. She was also invited to write and perform music with the ORSO philharmonic orchestra and choir in Freiburg, Germany.

Soon after, she wrote music and performed in a play called Jedermann. She even acted in the play, playing the character of Death. Simonne performed her music in the play as a one-woman orchestra. She performed in China, Switzerland, and Germany. The play then stayed at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg for three years. In 2014, she was asked to open concerts for the American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars.

Simonne also spent six months at an art group called Platoon Kunsthalle in Berlin. There, she created special LED paintings that reacted to movement. These paintings explored ideas from physics and space. She built them using open-source computer tools with her friend, who is a software engineer. Simonne also performed using her own self-built music devices and LED costumes. She also works as a DJ, playing electronic music in nightclubs.

Soundhunters, Rub, and Gravity (2015–Present)

In 2015, Simonne explored music as a spiritual practice in the Brazilian Amazon. This was part of Jean Michel Jarre's documentary Soundhunters, where she spent time with the Guaraní people. She also released a song called "The Silver Cord" on an album put together by Jean Michel Jarre.

Simonne has also written and produced music for other artists. She even appeared in a music video. She produced a remix called "Sick in the Head" for the Rub Remixed album. The musician Peaches also made a remix of Simonne's first single, which was shown first in Billboard magazine.

Simonne has given talks about how science and art influence her work. She spoke at the Blue Dot Festival in Manchester and the Make Sound Festival in Leicester.

In 2016, Simonne used sounds from gravitational waves. These sounds came from the collision of black holes, recorded by LIGO. She also worked with CERN, using data from the large hadron collider in her song "Alchemy." On May 27, 2016, Simonne released her first single and music video for "Gravity" around the world.

In 2021, Simonne sang on Sneaker ...'s first album in almost 20 years, called Squaring the Circle.

Music Style and Inspirations

Simonne Jones usually produces, records, and writes most of her music and lyrics by herself in her studio. She describes her music style as "dark pop." Her music mixes different sounds like pop, synth-pop, dream pop, punk, alternative, baroque pop, and electronic music. She uses computer programs like Pro Tools, Logic, and Ableton, along with old-style synthesizers, to create her sound.

Fusion magazine said that Simonne "uses her background in scientific theory to write electro-pop songs that talk about complex ideas like relativity and gravity." They added that her music sounds both out of this world and familiar.

Lena Dunham's newsletter, Lenny Letter, wrote that Simonne is a lover of science and used to be a biomedical researcher. Her interest in ideas like the theory of relativity and other natural things inspires her music. She is fascinated by the "unknown mysteries of the universe."

Simonne explained a production trick in Popular Science magazine. She said, "In Spooky Action I used sounds from a UK researcher who translates star pulses into audio waves to better understand them [...] I created a sound library where I can play the stars on a keyboard."

A music software company called Native Instruments even released a special Simonne Jones drum kit. It's a virtual instrument plug-in called Battery, with sounds unique to her music style.

Her music style has been compared to artists like PJ Harvey, Nine Inch Nails, Florence And The Machine, and Grimes.

Awards and Honors

Tours

Headlining Tours

• Sowo tour (Italy, 2013)
• ORSO philharmonic (Germany 2013)
• Untitled tour (Italy, 2015)
• Thalia Theater tour (China, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, 2014–2016)

Supporting Tours

• Poliça (2012)
• Thirty Seconds to Mars, Love, ..., Faith and Dreams Tour (2013)
• Peaches, Rub Tour (2016)