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Jonathan Coulton

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Johnny Slick:
As some of y'all may know, I enjoy funny stuff. Jonathan Coulton is more than "just" funny though. Like Ben Folds, he writes a lot of his songs from a particular point of view that comes off as being really, really funny but not in a hi-I-am-making-jokes way. The best example of BF is probably "Rockin' the Suburbs", which of course is about a white surburban kid who wants to rock the mic. It's a little mean-spirited, not quite as loving a treatment as, say, the guy in "Deacon Blues" by the Dan, but that's the kind of thing I love out of songwriters nowadays for some reason.

Anyway I wanted to open a thread so the 0.354 people who also like JC can also discuss some of the meaning behind his songs (the music itself, having played a pretty good amount of pop and rock in my past, I'm not sure much can be said other than "this is in the style of X" or I like it", I'm afraid). Anyway...

Curl - I guess you could look at this as a sarcastic look at a very minor sport, but I think it's a loving look at a person with a quirky pastime. Elsewhere, Coulton takes the POV of a sea-monster, a zombie, a current mad scientist, and a nerdy kid who will one day be a mad scientist (for that matter, a computer with a strange sense of compassion and a weird sense of pastry integrity, but you all probably knew that); why can't he also take the POV of a curling coach?

TMK there is only one other song about curling and that is "Northern Lites" by Super Furry Animals.

Today With Your Wife - This is the song that kind of prompted it for me. The JC Wikipedia says that it's about maybe the ex-wife of a guy's brother but I'm not sure I buy that. I go with the "last" option they present, which is that the subject is deceased. Apparently there are some weird symbols attached to the songs on this album (Artificial Heart) and the one used here is "Betrayal". Well, okay, that doesn't really invalidate my theory, though, does it? The death of a close loved one is very complicated. If you were just plain sad about it, it would be a hell of a lot easier to process.

When my dad died last year, for instance, I felt a great many things: sadness, of course, but on top of that some severe regret that I didn't spend more time with him, particularly after he found out that he was going to have surgery that had a very small chance of working. This was cut with anger - yes, anger - at him for pushing that off like it was no big thing and his exhortations for people not to worry about him. Which, of course, turns into more sadness and regret because, jeez, I knew the guy for almost 37 years and should probably have figured out by the end that he was all about putting up a brave face when everything around us was falling apart. And there, too, was betrayal - it was my dad's love of reading that led me into the failure-career of writing, the first (failed) novel was written with him in mind, and this was going to be sort-of for him too (he was a big fan of mysteries; granted, not so much historical ones).

The point here isn't "poor JS", it's that death is really, really complicated, especially when it happens to someone you know really, really well.

Famous Blue Raincoat - Okay, so where I said I wasn't going to discuss the music itself... I can't help it. I realized listening to this that this is a fantastic song. I never really realized it listening to Leonard Cohen do it because he was too busy selling the lyrics to make it musical. Okay, that's my bias; a lot of people like Cohen (and Bob Dylan for that matter). I feel like there should just be someone who does nothing but cover 1960s and 70s folk music so that those of us who don't want to listen to slam poetry masquerading as music can decide whether or not we like a song or not. (James Taylor gets a pass)

Tom Cruise Crazy - This song came out back in 2006 and is somehow more relevant now than it was then. Again, you can take it as him being mean to the subject, but in this case I think it actually kind of raises a point (maybe Cruise's problem isn't that he's a gay man who was "cured" by Scientology but just really narcissistic... and look, if you looked like Tom Cruise and actually were Tom Cruise and kind of went in that direction, wouldn't you want to do Tom Cruise and be a little bummed that that was an impossibility?).

The Future Soon - There was a This American Life episode earlier this year where a reporter got in touch with a bunch of musicians including Phil Collins of Genesis and asked them how to write a good breakup song. Collins REALLY annoyed me, I have to say: his "point" was that you ought to keep the lyrics as vague as possible because that way the basicness resonates with the audience or something. To which I say, bullshit and also Bull. Shit. Granted, I am an aspiring novel-writer, not a songwriter, but fuck that noise. You get specific as shit and through that specific-ness the audience picks out particular, specific things to sympathize with and they go along with whatever else you talk about. And I'm sorry, but that works in music as well. It works like awesomesauce in "American Pie", which is probably the best rock song ever made (at least from a lyrical standpoint). It works on "Kate" or "Brick" from the "Whatever and Ever Amen" album (by Ben Folds Five), and on, say, "Pinch Me" by BNL the little details like running the hose on the lawn and then sleeping away the afternoon evoke what depression is really like as well as any song I've heard.

I think the real message Collins was sending was "if the music's good enough, you can basically sing about anything." Dammit. I admit to liking "Invisible Touch" too.  >:(

Okay, but I was talking about JC. Obviously I am not a mad scientist, and I wasn't a budding mad scientist when I was 12. But I'm sorry... those details like... okay, screw it. This post is massively long already so I'll just make it huge. Here's the first verse:

Last week I left a note on Laura's desk
It said I love you, signed, anonymous friend
Turns out she's smarter than I thought she was
She knows I wrote it, now the whole class does too
And I'm all alone during couple skate
When she skates by with some guy on her arm
But I know that I'll forget the look of pity in her face
When I'm living in my solar dome on a platform in space

Yes, it's silly, but Jesus, nerds... agree with me here. When you were getting picked on by the cool kids in middle school, you didn't, like, want to become one of the jocks or whatever, you wanted to be your own kind of badass, someone like you only a lot better. And so when the chorus comes, I'm sorry, but you have to be in, like, total agreement or else you lose your nerd card:

'Cause it's gonna be the future soon
And I won't always be this way
When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
It's gonna be the future soon
I've never seen it quite so clear
And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here

OKAY. Probably enough for now.

Ravenhull:
I discovered him when Dragon*con TV was using the video for Re: Your Brains back in '09.  He's also the guy who wrote the ending music for Portal, Still Alive.

Personally, my favorite one by him is his cover of Baby Got Back where he kept 99% of the lyrics the same, but sung it in the manner of a ballad.

quirk3k:
I love how he takes on other points of view. In "I'm Your Moon," he is the moon Charon singing to Pluto. In "I Crush Everything," he is a giant squid.

Johnny Slick:

--- Quote from: Ravenhull on Aug 12, 2012, 06:00:08 AM ---I discovered him when Dragon*con TV was using the video for Re: Your Brains back in '09.  He's also the guy who wrote the ending music for Portal, Still Alive.

Personally, my favorite one by him is his cover of Baby Got Back where he kept 99% of the lyrics the same, but sung it in the manner of a ballad.

--- End quote ---
Yeah, I agree... that's a fantastic cover.

arthwollipot:
I heard Skullcrusher Mountain on a gaming podcast I was subscribed to at the time, and I was hooked.

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