Jonathan Coulton
Coulton discusses making video game music, Tony Plimpton and having a song in Rock Band.
Internet sensation Jonathan Coulton has gone from utter obscurity as a computer programmer to stardom as one of the most popular geek rock musicians today. Fans of video games have heard his work in both Portal and Rock Band and his song “Code Monkey” is the theme song for the G4 television show of the same name. Using astounding detective skills, HEAVE got a hold of Jonathan to discuss life, music and the fact that old people don’t understand games.
HEAVE: Your bio says you used to be a computer programmer before you started playing music. Why did you decide to make the change?
Jonathan Coulton: Well, you know it was something that I had always wanted to do and just never got around to doing. I originally moved to New York planning to be a rock star and then I just sort of forgot and (laughs) got a job by mistake and then before I knew it that became a career and I was in my 30’s. But then every year it was more and more like it was getting later and later for me to actually try this and then I had my first child and it was sort of a wake up call. It was also important to set an example and be the kind of person who was taking chances and trying to do the things that they really wanted to do. So that’s why at the end of 2005 I left that job to do music full time.
HEAVE: Jumping to another point in your bio…you went to Yale. You also have a song about the Mandelbrot Set.
JoCo: Yes.
HEAVE: Did you take any classes with Benoit Mandelbrot, and has he heard the song?
JoCo: I did not. You know, I’m not even sure that he teaches undergraduate classes anymore. So I never did meet him or take a class with him but I was certainly familiar with his work just because it was something that I was interested in. I do know that he has heard the song because a fan of mine who was at Yale and had access to him played it for him and showed him the lyrics and told me that he had heard it. I kind of get the impression his reaction was kind of like, “Huh?” (laughs)
HEAVE: The subject matter of your songs isn’t what anyone could call common. Where do you get your inspiration for what you write about?
JoCo: You know, it’s from all over the place. I do write about a lot of geeky subjects and a lot of songs could be science fiction stories or from the point of view of unusual characters like monstrous creatures or mad scientists or what have you. It’s really just the stuff that I’m interested in. I long ago got bored with writing songs about myself and songs about emotions and break ups and whatnot. Although that still comes up, I’m much more excited about writing a song when it’s something that I am really interested in and something that’s a little bit unusual and maybe a challenging perspective.
HEAVE: Where do you pull from as far as music goes?
JoCo: Well I grew up on a diet of mostly Billy Joel and the Beatles, for a long time that was all I listened to. I branched out a little bit in my teenage years to Pink Floyd and XTC and Steely Dan but there’s a lot of folky stuff in there too you know, like Simon & Garfunkel and even Shawn Colvin I love and more recently in my life I’ve really fallen in love with bluegrass music which I never listened to until I was an adult but it’s some of the most beautiful and emotional music that I’ve ever heard. It’s really terrific.
HEAVE: What was the motivation for doing “Thing a Week”?
JoCo: That started just a couple weeks after I left my day job. There I was, sitting at home pretending to have a day job as a musician. And it seemed like I could feel myself slipping away into that zone of daytime television and red wine. And it seemed like a really good idea to give myself a task and some deadlines and it was also actually a suggestion of someone I had been working with. It was my last few weeks on the job and he said “What are you going to do with your time?” I said, “I have no idea,” and he said, “You should write a song a week.” That sounded crazy to me and I told him so and of course, there I was with all this free time and the idea came back to me and I was like, I should do it. I should try it and see how far I get and they won’t all be good but it will be a good exercise and it was a stunt. By doing it online and by declaring my intention maybe it would attract some attention.
HEAVE: Did that work?
JoCo: Yeah, to my surprise it really did. And pretty quickly, too. I think song number five was “Baby Got Back”, my cover of “Baby Got Back”. And I felt kind of bad about doing a cover song so early but I had no ideas then. And for whatever reason, that really struck a chord with people and got picked up on various blogs and emailed all over the place and there was this huge traffic spike. Before I knew it, there were hundreds of thousands of people coming to the site. That was the first inkling I had that maybe this could turn into something good.
HEAVE: Did you learn anything from “Thing a Week”? And if so, what was the biggest thing you learned?
JoCo: Yeah, I learned quite a bit. I think that my songwriting got better over the course of it. I think you always continue changing…your skills as a songwriter. That just evolves the whole time you’re alive. But I do think I got a lot better at it. It also really taught me that there are songs everywhere and all you need to do is sit down and write them. I’m not a particularly prolific songwriter in my natural state and so it was something of a wake up call for me to discover that if I wanted to write a song a week, I could write a song a week. And some of them were even good (laughs). And it was also so wonderful and awful at the same time. I was frequently writing songs that I hated and then discovering by the time that I was finished that I really liked them a lot. That was another lesson, too. When you’re in the middle of creating something you are such a bad judge of how good it’s going to be. Really the trick to writing is to stop being so hard on yourself and stop censoring yourself as you’re writing. Just write what you’re writing and finish it…and move on.
HEAVE: And that seems to work for you.
JoCo: Yeah, and I’ve just said that as if I’m very wise about songwriting now. And I have the same problem every time I write a song I’m like, “Oh, this sucks.” And then ten days later I’m still beating my head against the wall but then I’m like, “Well, maybe this is good.”
HEAVE: Has there ever been a case where you really felt that a song was absolutely horrible but you stuck it out and in the end it ended up being one of your favorites?
JoCo: Yeah, a good example of that is a song called “A Talk with George” which is a song about George Plimpton. And somebody pointed out that there was a George Plimpton songwriting contest which I thought was kind of funny because who would ever write a song about George Plimpton? So I started writing and it was kind of goofy and it was like a list of all the crazy things that he did and I was not very happy with it at all I was like, “It’s not saying anything, it’s doesn’t mean anything. It’s just trite.” And then a little shift happened in my head. Originally it was like, “He did this. He did that.” And then I changed the perspective a little bit so he was talking to you saying, “You should do this. You should do that,” as if he was giving you advice. And then the meaning of it sort of bloomed like a flower all at once. And it was like George Plimpton as an example of trying things and not being afraid of things and it was immediately transformed from this trite list of stunts to this, what felt to me like a very important and true message that I was trying to tell myself at that point. And that’s become one of my favorite songs because it just has a lot of truth in it I think.
HEAVE: You release your music under Creative Commons. How viable is that as a distribution strategy and do you think that more and more bands are going to start shifting that way?
JoCo: It’s been great for me. I credit the free flowing of the music. I think that’s one of the reasons that I’ve been able to reach so many people. I published everything as an mp3 that doesn’t have any restrictions on it and you can copy and send it to friends, you can put in on a mix CD. You can do anything you want with it as long as it’s non-commercial. I think as a result of that freedom and not that you necessarily obtained that song for free. You can buy it and still have that freedom to pass it along. It just has reached so many more people than it would have. And yeah, I think we’re already starting to see a shift. Trent Reznor just released the last album that he did as a Creative Commons license thing which meant that it was legal for people to obtain it from bit torrent sites for free, without paying him. Which sounds crazy and you can say well, that worked great for Trent Reznor because he’s famous and he’s got fans and he’s got a huge fan base. And it also worked for me, and I was certainly not famous when I started. I think that more and more, we’re seeing examples of it working on all different levels. And I think that insofar as it continues to work for people, that more and more people will continue to try it.
HEAVE: What was your reaction to the success of “Still Alive”?
JoCo: Well I was thrilled, obviously. I was so pleased to be working with Valve because I had been an admirer of their games for some time. I met them and I just thought they were really funny and creative and I saw Portal before it was finished. I thought it was such a brilliant game and such a great combination of design and gameplay and writing of the character. So I was really happy to be a part of that project. I think we were all a little taken by surprise at how much people enjoyed the song. I felt pretty happy by it when it was done, but then when I saw it in the game as part of the bigger picture it just blew me away how great a package it had turned into. Then of course, everybody went nuts. And yeah, I’m delighted. I think it’s great.
HEAVE: And now you’ve got people pretending to be you and singing that song in Rock Band.
JoCo: (Laughs) Yeah, I know! It’s awesome! That’s the other thing. I’m very proud of that and it’s something I can’t even really explain to my mom. “Now what? Your song is in a game or something?”
HEAVE: My last question is multiple choice, but you have to explain your answer. If you could be any of the following characters from one of your songs, who would it be and why? Would you be Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the evil genius from “Skullcrusher Mountain” or the dude from “First of May”?
JoCo: (Laughs) Oh boy. I would have to say that I would be the evil genius from “Skullcrusher Mountain” because (laughs) well first of all I think that Kennesaw Mountain Landis is not a nice guy. In that song, the character Kennesaw Mountain Landis is very powerful to be sure, but he’s kind of a jerk. And “First of May”, I don’t know, that just makes me uncomfortable (laughs). But the thing about the evil genius in “Skullcrusher Mountain” and the reason that I would always choose him is that he has such purity of intent. You know, he’s not trying to be a bad guy. He is who he is, and he’s doing his best and I think that’s all any of us can do, you know?
HEAVE: I think that’s as good as that answer’s gonna get.
JoCo: Amen, brother.
Posted by Cory Roop on Sep 08, 2008 @ 7:00 am
