I've recently gotten in Jonathan Coulton's music and I must say that I have become a fan. My journy to Jonathan's music was a culmination of the fact that I have gotten pretty tired of most "serious" music with lyrics. It just seems like most music with lyrics that I have been listening to lately are just trying too hard to be deep or on the opposite end, I find a lot of lyrics contrite. I can't write lyrics to save my life, but I think I've just gotten tired of hearing the same themes (love, heartbreak, getting over somebody, wishing someone was dead, etc.) over and over again.So, through the magic of YouTube, I have discovered various other artists, mostly comedic in nature. I especially love MC Frontalot, Notorious MSG, and Flight of the Conchords. All of them satire some other genre with some incredibly clever lyrics. However, they seem to come from more of the comedy side of things and while the music is pretty good, it's not always spectacular.Enter Jonathan Coulton. I first was exposed to his music by Veronica Belmont when she posted a video of her Rock Band performance with Jonathan of his song "Still Alive." I thought it was a cute song, but I didn't understand the context at the time that it was for a videogame.Even more recently, I've started listning to Podcasts of Leo Laporte's network TWiT. Jonathan was a guest on show #133 and I found the discussion fascinating enough to start checking out Jonathan's music through YouTube videos. Needless to say, I was hooked after hearing his cover of "Baby Got Back" and his other more famous songs "Code Monkey" and "Skullcrusher Mountain". I went on to buy Jonathan's $70 complete mp3 collection from his website. I haven't made it through all the songs yet, but I like most of what I'm hearing. "Womb with a View" has become a favorite of mine, along with "Mandelbrot Set" and "You Ruined Everything."What I like so much about Jonathan is that the music itself is great, but his lyrics are filled with so much imagery. His stuff is funny, yes, but it's almost like he's intentionally taking his funny lyrics seriously (whereas the groups I mentioned before are serious about being funny, if that makes any sense). It's the same effect on me as the short story author Gogol. Both Jonathan and Gogol write from the point of view of the "crazy" narrator. Gogol writes as if he was a mental patient. Jonathan writes as if he was an evil genius. In both cases, you tend to laugh at first, but then the imagery is so strong that you start to empathize with the narrator. With Jonathan's music, he can really make you feel as if you were a giant squid who is depressed. To me, that's what the best songwriters can accomplish: they make you feel exactly what their character is feeling.I hope Jonathan gets bigger because there's no way everyone shouldn't know how good he is.
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