Coulton,
Paul and Storm
, and
Molly Lewis
performing at
Dragon*Con
2011
Coulton's music tends to fit a
folk rock
style, with elements of pop and
indie rock
.
Early career and geek culture (1990s?2005)
edit
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]
Thing a Week
albums (2005?2006)
edit
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.
"Still Alive" and album hiatus (2007?2008)
edit
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.
The Aftermath
and
Artificial Heart
(2009?2012)
edit
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]
Solid State
,
The SpongeBob Musical
,
Some Guys
, and other projects (2013?present)
edit
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.
[26]
The project was funded on Kickstarter, and reached its goal within 12 hours.
[27]
On August 31, 2013, it was announced that Coulton would be contributing lyrics to
The SpongeBob Musical
, which premiered in Chicago in June 2016.
[28]
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.
[29]
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.
[30]
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.
[31]
On March 29, 2019, Coulton released
Some Guys
, a cover album of songs from the 1970s.
[32]
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".
[33]
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
.
[34]
Coulton posted a
tongue-in-cheek
response on his blog about the comparison, saying "to which I say: snarkity snark snark!"
[35]
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"
[36]
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.
[37]
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.
[38]
[39]
[40]
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.
[41]
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.
[42]
[39]
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.
[39]
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
.
[43]
In January 2014, the
CBS
drama
The Good Wife
based its
fifth season
episode "Goliath and David" on the incident.
[44]