Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith was an American singer-songwriter whose intimate, melancholy, fingerpicked acoustic-guitar songs made him one of the most-influential American indie-folk and indie-rock artists of the late 1990s. He was born Steven Paul Smith on August 6, 1969, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was raised primarily by his mother in Texas through age 14, then moved to live with his father in Portland, Oregon. He attended Hampshire College in Massachusetts before returning to Portland in the early 1990s.

Smith first emerged through the Portland indie-rock band Heatmiser (1992–1996), which he co-founded with Neil Gust. While Heatmiser was still active he began releasing solo acoustic material — the 1994 album Roman Candle and the 1995 self-titled Elliott Smith album — that established his signature style: layered double-tracked vocals, fingerpicked acoustic guitars, and lyrics built around emotional vulnerability and quiet despair.

His national breakthrough came through Gus Van Sant's 1997 film Good Will Hunting, which featured six Smith songs on its soundtrack. The film's song "Miss Misery" was nominated for the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Song; Smith performed it at the 1998 ceremony in the most-iconic-awkward Oscar-night solo guitar performance of the late 1990s. The Oscar-nomination publicity propelled his 1998 album XO — his major-label debut — to substantial commercial visibility.

His subsequent albums Figure 8 (2000) and the posthumously-released From a Basement on the Hill (2004) consolidated his reputation as one of the most-significant American singer-songwriters of his generation. He struggled with severe depression and substance abuse throughout his career. On October 21, 2003, he died of two stab wounds to the chest at his Los Angeles home, aged 34. The Los Angeles County coroner's report listed the cause of death as "undetermined" — neither suicide nor homicide could be definitively concluded — and the case remains technically unresolved nearly 20 years later.

His name Elliott is from the Hebrew Eliyahu meaning "my God is Yahweh" — referring to the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Elliott has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.