Jonathan Coulton | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Also known as | JoCo [1] |
Born | December 1, 1970 |
Origin | Colchester, Connecticut, U.S. |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter, radio musician, in-house musician |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, guitar, bass, drums, banjo, ukulele, zendrum, accordion, harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, analog synthesizers |
Years active | 2003–present |
Website | jonathancoulton |
Jonathan William Coulton (born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", "Still Alive", and "Want You Gone" (the last three being featured in games developed by Valve: Left 4 Dead 2 , Portal , and Portal 2 respectively). He was the house musician for NPR weekly puzzle quiz show Ask Me Another from 2012 until its end in 2021.
His album Artificial Heart was the first to chart, eventually reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers and No. 125 in the Billboard 200.
Coulton's music tends to fit a folk rock style, with elements of pop and indie rock.
Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale, where he was a member of The Spizzwinks and the Yale Whiffenpoofs. [3] In the 1990s, Coulton was in a short-lived band, named SuperGroup, with television producer Eric Salat and best-selling author Darin Strauss. [4] A former computer programmer employed at Cluen, a New York City software company, [5] and self-described geek, Coulton tended to write quirky, witty lyrics about science fiction and technology. Most of Coulton's recordings feature his singing over guitar, bass, and drums; some also feature the various other instruments Coulton plays, including accordion, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, zendrum and glockenspiel. [6]
Coulton's debut album, Smoking Monkey, was released in November 2003.
Several early podcasters discovered and made regular use of Coulton's music, notably Adam Curry of the Daily Source Code and The Wizards of Technology. [7] In April 2006, he lent his voice to one such podcast, The Spoilers, in which he and hosts Rick Yaeger and Bill Douthett provided a 2-hour fan commentary for Raiders of the Lost Ark . [8] [9]
He was the Contributing Troubadour at Popular Science magazine, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a five-song set by Coulton called Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms. [10] He was also the musical director for The Little Gray Book Lectures. [11]
From September 16, 2005, to September 30, 2006, Coulton ran "Thing a Week", during which he recorded 52 musical pieces, one per week, in an effort to push his creative envelope via a "forced-march approach to writing and recording"; to prove to himself that he could produce creative output to a deadline; and to see whether a professional artist could use the Internet and distribution via Creative Commons to support himself. Rare topical songs include 2005's "W's Duty", which samples President George W. Bush, and 2006's "Tom Cruise Crazy." In a September 2006 interview, he said of the experiment, "In some parts of the country, I'd be making a decent living". [12] In a February 25, 2008, interview with This Week in Tech, he said that he made more money in 2007 than he did in his last year of working as a programmer, 40% of it from digital downloads and 40% from merchandise and performances. [13]
In 2006, Coulton began touring with comedy duo Paul and Storm. Coulton initially opened the concerts, but as his popularity grew, he began headlining.
Coulton wrote and performed a song titled "Still Alive" for the ending credits of Valve's 2007 video game Portal , with vocals by Ellen McLain. On April 1, 2008, Harmonix made this track available as free downloadable content for the game Rock Band . [14]
A version with Coulton's vocals was also included on the Orange Box Original Soundtrack , [15] in addition to the one heard at the end of the game. "Re: Your Brains" made an appearance as an easter egg in Left 4 Dead 2 . [16] "Still Alive" has been called "the most influential game music". [17] In 2011, Coulton followed up the success of "Still Alive" with a new song at the end of Portal 2 , "Want You Gone". He also wrote the Portal-themed song "You Wouldn't Know" for Lego Dimensions .
Coulton is also known for original pieces such as "Code Monkey", which was featured on Slashdot [18] on April 23, 2006, and linked from the webcomic Penny Arcade . [19] It was also the theme song for an animated show on G4 called Code Monkeys .
Coulton accompanied John Hodgman on his "700 Hobo Names" promotional track for Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise as the guitarist (he was credited as "Jonathan William Coulton, the Colchester Kid"). Coulton also can be heard throughout the audiobook version of the same book, playing the theme song to the book, playing incidental music, and bantering with Hodgman, who reads the audio version of his work. On April 25, 2006, Hodgman mentioned Coulton on The Daily Show : a Jonathan Coulton of Colchester, Connecticut, was Hodgman's pick to win an essay contest on overpowering Iraqi resistance to American invasion. [20] Coulton wrote and performed "the winning entry", a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton appeared on the tour for Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require .
Coulton composed the title music for the show Mystery Diagnosis , and also has contributed other songs under "The Little Gray Book Lectures", a series of audio releases from John Hodgman.
Coulton had been working on his follow-up to the Thing a Week albums, tentatively titled The Aftermath. He said the title was an umbrella term for unreleased tracks recorded after Thing a Week. "The Aftermath" was then released in 2009.
A DVD & CD of a concert performed February 22, 2008, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, entitled Best. Concert. Ever. was released in 2009. At the concert, Coulton played "Still Alive" along with guest "musicians" and geek/celebrities Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Veronica Belmont. [21] Coulton also opened for They Might Be Giants for a few shows of their March 2010 tour. [22] He toured with them again in February 2012.
On May 25, 2010, Coulton said on his official site that he would work on a new album, to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, [23] and for the first time ever with a full band, including Marty Beller of They Might Be Giants, [24] in a professional recording studio. The resulting album, Artificial Heart , was released on November 8, 2011. It contains 18 songs, including his two songs from the Portal series.
In May 2012, Coulton became the house musician for the NPR game show Ask Me Another . Coulton performs some of his own songs on the show, as well as covers of other songs related to the trivia and puzzle challenges. [25]
Since 2011, Coulton has hosted his own annual week-long affinity cruise, the JoCo Cruise. [1] The cruise has attracted high profile performers such as Rachel Bloom, Aimee Mann, Josh Gondelman, They Might Be Giants, and Wil Wheaton, among others. [26] [27] [28]
On April 15, 2013, Coulton announced that he was working with comic book writer Greg Pak on a graphic novel based on the characters in his songs, called Code Monkey Save World. [29] The project was funded on Kickstarter, and reached its goal within 12 hours. [30]
On August 31, 2013, it was announced that Coulton would be contributing lyrics to The SpongeBob Musical , which premiered in Chicago in June 2016. [31] Coulton composed the opening number "Bikini Bottom Day", which is reprised multiple times throughout the show as SpongeBob's main theme. Coulton also contributed to additional lyrics for other musical numbers featured in the show. Along with other musical contributors to the show, Coulton won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Score, and was nominated for Best Original Score for the 72nd Tony Awards.
In June 2016, Coulton started doing a one-minute "Previously On" song at the beginning of the CBS TV series BrainDead , a summer series with a planned run of 13 episodes. [32]
On April 28, 2017, Coulton released a new album Solid State which is for sale through his website and iTunes as well as being available for streaming on SoundCloud. [33]
Coulton co-wrote the songs "Good for Me", "Patient Zero" and "Rollercoaster" with Aimee Mann for her 2017 album "Mental Illness", for which he also contributed acoustic guitar and backing vocals. He joined Mann as opening support act on the European and North American tour of "Mental Illness", contributing additional guitar and vocals to her main set.[ citation needed ]
On April 15, 2018, The Good Fight episode "Day 450" featured a song by Coulton, set to a short Schoolhouse Rock -style animation. The song echoed the episode's plotline around efforts to impeach Donald Trump and was later shared by the show's YouTube channel. [34]
On March 29, 2019, Coulton released Some Guys, a cover album of songs from the 1970s. [35]
Coulton provided the opening theme for The Adventure Zone: Abnimals in 2024. [36]
Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, allowing others to use them in their own noncommercial works. As a result, a number of music videos have been created using his songs, including such machinima as the ILL Clan's video for "Code Monkey" and a kinetic typography video for the song "Shop Vac". [37]
In May 2011, Coulton was interviewed on NPR's popular economics-related program Planet Money . He disclosed that he makes about $500,000 a year from his music despite lacking a record label contract. He expressed gratitude towards his fans for his surprise success, the degree of which he called "absurd". In a broader discussion of whether or not the internet is good for musicians, Coulton answered in the affirmative, while journalist Frannie Kelley described his success as a "fluke," comparing it to the unexpected popularity of the Snuggie. [38] Coulton posted a tongue-in-cheek response on his blog about the comparison, saying "to which I say: snarkity snark snark!" [39]
Most of Coulton's songs are published on his website as MP3 and FLAC downloads. Some of them are free, and none of them are subject to digital rights management. All of his original songs fall under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License. "Still Alive", "Want You Gone" and "Wikipedia Chanukah" [40] are the only exceptions to this, as Coulton assigned all rights for the former two songs to Valve and "Wikipedia Chanukah" is under a BY-SA license to comply with Wikipedia's similar license. Along with "Still Alive," Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" appears in jukeboxes in Left 4 Dead 2 . "Want You Gone" also features in the end credits of Portal 2 . All three of these games were designed by Valve. [41]
One of Coulton's best-known works is his 2005 light-acoustic cover of the Sir Mix-a-Lot hit song "Baby Got Back". Coulton wrote a new melody for his cover version of the song. Coulton's altered cover version was itself covered, but without permission (including his original line "Johnny C's in trouble"), by the American TV series Glee in 2013. [42] [43] [44] Like Coulton's other work, he released his cover version of the song under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, which requires users to attribute the work to him, and forbids all commercial use of it. [45] The show's lawyers contended that they were within their legal rights, and that Coulton should be happy for the exposure,[ citation needed ] though Coulton received no acknowledgement or credit. [46] [43] Coulton's own lawyers told him that as he only used a compulsory license to make the cover, it would be difficult to sue for damages using the argument that he retained copyright over his own version. [43]
Instead, Coulton released the single "Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)", a "cover of Glee's cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's song, which is to say it's EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version." Coulton said he would donate the proceeds from all sales until the end of February 2013 to two Glee-related charities: the VH1 Save the Music Foundation and the It Gets Better Project. [47]
In January 2014, the CBS drama The Good Wife based its fifth season episode "Goliath and David" on the incident. [48]
Jonathan Coulton is the founder and biggest draw of the JoCo Cruise. The JoCo Cruise was started in 2011. It is a specialized nerd cruise that is a week long. [49] It is popular with fans of board games, video games, and nerdy music. Jonathan Coulton plays his music live on each of these cruises and attends the cruise himself.
"Baby Got Back" is a song written, co-produced and recorded by American rapper and songwriter Sir Mix-a-Lot. Released in May 1992 by Def American and Reprise as the second single from his third album, Mack Daddy (1992), the song samples the 1986 Detroit techno single "Technicolor" by Channel One. At the time of its original release, the song caused controversy because of its outspoken and blatantly sexual lyrics objectifying women, as well as specific references to the buttocks, which some people found objectionable. The song's accompanying music video was briefly banned by MTV. Mix-a-Lot defended the song as being empowering to curvaceous women who were being shown skinny models as an ideal for beauty.
John Morgan Roderick is an American musician, singer, songwriter, podcaster, and politician. He is the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band The Long Winters, was a touring member of the rock band Harvey Danger, and co-hosts the podcasts Roderick On The Line and Omnibus.
"Don't Stop Believin'" is a song by American rock band Journey. It was released in October 1981 as the second single from the group's seventh studio album, Escape (1981), released through Columbia Records. "Don't Stop Believin'" shares writing credits between the band's vocalist Steve Perry, guitarist Neal Schon, and keyboardist Jonathan Cain. A mid-tempo rock anthem and power ballad, "Don't Stop Believin'" is known for its iconic opening piano riff.
John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as his satirical trilogy The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, and for his work as a contributor on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The Areas of My Expertise is a 2005 American satirical almanac by John Hodgman. It is written in the form of absurd historical stories, complex charts and graphs, and fake newspaper columns. Among its sections are a list of 700 different hobo names and complete descriptions of "all 51" US states. The full title of the book is:
This is the discography of singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton.
Glee is an American jukebox musical comedy-drama television series that aired on Fox in the United States from May 19, 2009, to March 20, 2015. It focuses on the New Directions, a glee club at the fictional William McKinley High School, that is located in Ohio, USA. The club competes as a show choir while its disparate members deal with social issues, regarding sexuality, gender, race, family, teen relationships and teamwork.
"Still Alive" is the song featured in the closing credits of the 2007 video game Portal. It was composed and arranged by Jonathan Coulton and was performed by Ellen McLain, who voiced the Portal antagonist and in-game singer of the song, GLaDOS. Two Valve developers commissioned a song by Coulton, a fan of Valve's Half-Life series, which is set in the same universe as Portal. The song was released on The Orange Box Soundtrack on December 21, 2007, along with an exclusive vocal mix not heard in the game.
missFlag is an indie pop-rock band from Jerusalem. Formed in 2005, the band's music is mostly influenced by the new wave of British music and alternative rock. The band consists of Gil Assayas, Assa Bukelman, Shai Saadia (bass), and Assaf Kraus. The band formerly included Ohad Eilam.
JoCo Looks Back is a compilation album by American internet comedy musician Jonathan Coulton. The title comes from Coulton's nickname, JoCo. It is his first 'greatest hits' compilation and his first of three compilation albums, the others being the live concert recording Best. Concert. Ever and Jonathan Coulton's Greatest Hit , a compilation created for the Humble Music Bundle. The album features 20 previously released tracks from Coulton's first four studio albums, plus the two EPs Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms and Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow. The album was released on October 22, 2008.
Molly Lewis is an American musician who is known for her ukulele playing and who rose to prominence on the Internet. She plays both covers and original songs. Her original music consists of comedic songs that deal with relevant pop culture topics. She is currently signed with DFTBA Records through which she released her first EP I Made You A CD... But I Eated It.
Artificial Heart is the eighth studio album by rock musician Jonathan Coulton. After taking a long hiatus from songwriting after his successful 2006 Thing a Week project, Coulton started production on Artificial Heart after encouragement from John Flansburgh, also the album's producer. Unlike much of Coulton's previous work, Artificial Heart's original lyricism is largely non-comedic and contains few references to geek culture overall, instead opting for heavy themes of betrayal, commitment, abandonment, and surrender.
Thing a Week is a series of studio albums released by rock musician Jonathan Coulton in 2006. He compiled these albums from his weekly podcast, where he challenged himself to write, record, and produce a new song within a week, every week, for an entire year. He had done this to prove to himself, and to fans, that he was capable of working with a deadline.
Portal 2 is a physics-based puzzle-platform game created by Valve and released on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Linux in April 2011, followed by a Nintendo Switch version in June 2022. The game, set in the desolate, labyrinthine Aperture Science facility, challenges the player to navigate test chambers created by the artificial intelligence GLaDOS, using a portal gun, a device able to create portals that link two points in space like a wormhole. The game expands on the original Portal by adding new puzzle elements, such as paint that imparts properties to surfaces, plates that can launch the player and objects over distances, tractor beams and bridges made of light.
"Code Monkey" is a song by Jonathan Coulton, released on 14 April 2006 and part of his album Thing a Week Three released in December 2006. It is one of his most popular songs and has since been downloaded over one million times. The song is about a computer programmer who thinks in ape-like terms, and has been described as a "rocking anthem about dead-end programming jobs."
"Sadie Hawkins" is the eleventh episode of the fourth season of the American musical television series Glee, and the seventy-seventh episode overall. Written by Ross Maxwell and directed by Bradley Buecker, it aired on Fox in the United States on January 24, 2013.
Judge John Hodgman is a weekly, comedic court show podcast hosted by John Hodgman and Jesse Thorn. The show is distributed online by Maximum Fun.
The Doubleclicks are a nerd-folk musical duo based in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California, consisting of siblings Laser Webber and Aubrey Turner. They first became known for performing nerd-friendly comedy music, including songs about Dungeons & Dragons, dinosaurs, and other geeky themes. While their later songs retain those elements, there has been a stronger focus on feminist and other social issues, and more personal themes.
Joseph Scrimshaw is an American comedian and writer for radio, television and theater, whom City Pages, a Twin Cities newspaper, describes as having an "irreverent and insightful wit." He is the author of a book of comic essays called Comedy of Doom and hosts a monthly podcast called Obsessed with Joseph Scrimshaw, where he and his guests discuss their obsessions. He performs across the country in a variety of venues, including comedy festivals like San Francisco's SketchFest and science fiction conventions such as Dragon Con and CONvergence, and his plays have been performed internationally. He has collaborated with performer Bill Corbett on a number of plays and written for RiffTrax, Corbett's joint comedy venture with Kevin Murphy and Michael J. Nelson. Scrimshaw has toured with musicians Molly Lewis and the Doubleclicks, and performed live for musician Jonathan Coulton's JoCo Cruise and the geek vaudeville w00tstock. Scrimshaw has been involved with writing and performing for American Public Media's radio variety show Wits, writing sketches and appearing as the character Theater Ghost. He has also written for the national sketch comedy television show M@dAbout.
Solid State is the ninth studio album by singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton. It was released on April 28, 2017. Coulton describes it as "a concept album about the internet, trolls, artificial intelligence, and how love and empathy will save humanity!" Coulton says that the album "has a bit of a concept behind it," with a "character that you follow throughout his life."