The most
surprising thing about last year's critically acclaimed videogame Portal wasn't its story or the innovative
way it let players bend the rules of time and space. No, the game's biggest
reveal was musical—the lovely, funny, insanely clever song that played
over the game's ending credits. Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" did all kinds
of work. It provided an offbeat end-game reward, presented players with the
suggestion that the story of Portal wasn't over, and most importantly, it provided a laugh. As
part of The A.V. Club's series of interviews inspired by the interaction of music and
videogames, Jonathan Coulton talked about self-publishing, Dr. Demento, and his
approach to writing from the perspective of an angry female computer.
The
A.V. Club: When were you contacted to write the song for Portal?
Jonathan
Coulton: I was doing
a show in Seattle, probably sometime in 2006. Some folks came up to me
afterwards and said, "Hey, we're fans and we're from Valve. Would you ever be
interested in writing some music for a game sometime?" And I said, "Yes,
please." I was already a big fan of Valve. I had played the Half-Life games, and I had also seen the
little teaser trailer on YouTube for Portal and thought it looked really great.
They contacted me later and had me come out to their offices and we talked
about a few different things. It turns out the people that came to my show were
on the Portal
team. The first thing we did was I sat down and played an early version of Portal—and really loved it. In
tossing ideas around we came up with the idea of writing a song that GlaDOS
would sing at the end of the game.
AVC:
It's not often that pop music gets created for videogames.
JC: Definitely. Music for videogames
means a certain thing, for the most part—a film score, essentially. With
a few exceptions. I've been aware of more of them since Portal came out. I was inspired long ago
by a game called Skullmonkeys. It was a side-scroller. You went around and picked up
coins or rocks or something. There was one bonus room, and when you were in
there there was a song that played the whole time. It was just a guy's voice
and a guitar, and he was singing about how you were in the bonus room and it
was fine and there was nothing to worry about. It's a happy little song. I was
so blown away by that because I'd never heard music do that in a game. I was inspired
by that as a possibility.
AVC:
You've mentioned elsewhere about approaching GlaDOS' character in the song.
What did you take away from playing the game about what kind of personality
GlaDOS was and how did that inform your writing the lyrics?
JC: I think one of the reasons it works
so well is that GlaDOS is such a well-drawn character. There's a lot of plot in
video games, but there isn't always a lot of character. And GlaDOS was, almost
as soon as you start playing and she starts talking to you, you start getting
an impression of who she is. And, of course, that deepens throughout the game.
She's conflicted in a lot of ways, I think. She seems to want to kill you. But
not really out of any ill will or resentment—except there is a little bit
of ill will and resentment. And she is sort of mad about something, but she's
masking that with the fact that she's a computer. That's the brilliant thing
about the writing in the game. Over the course of the game she inadvertently
reveals her true self to you. You gradually begin to understand that she's not
just a computer. She actually is pissed off about something. It comes across as
passive-aggressive behavior. The lucky thing about that is I write, frequently,
about passive-aggressive monsters. I don't know why.
AVC: A
lot of the songs you write are about getting into the character's head. What's
the appeal of that kind of writing to you?
JC: I like very much to find sympathy
for unsympathetic characters—zombies and mad scientists and giant squids
and that sort of thing. The sad monster really tugs at my heartstrings for some
reason. On top of that, the misunderstood personality, I think, is something
that really resonates with me. The mad scientist, evil genius who is in love
with this woman. He's awful, but he can't help it. It's who he is. I think
that's the most heartbreaking thing—to see somebody do their best and
fail because of who they are.
AVC:
Did the success of "Still Alive" result in more phone calls from people wanting
music for soundtracks?
JC: Not really. The main thing that
it's done is just brought a lot of general attention to me and the rest of my
music, which is great. People love the game, as they should because it's great,
and they love the experience of playing the game. But then afterwards they say,
"Hey, that's actually a good song." And if they take the time to see who that
is, they come and find other songs that they like. That's been the bulk of it.
I haven't had thousands of offers from videogame companies for additional songs.
But it's been wonderful. I'm very gratified by such a large and positive
response.
AVC:
You release your work under a Creative Commons license—freeing people to
make their own music videos using clips from World Of Warcraft or other games. More than a few
of these get millions of hits.
JC: It's another thing that's been
instrumental in getting my word out to people. I understand that the Creative
Commons license is a sort of counter-intuitive thing. How can you let just
anybody use your music for anything like that? It's true, some of those
homemade videos have been viewed millions of times. You can't buy that kind of
exposure. I mean, you can buy that kind of exposure, but it's very expensive.
For me, that kind of exposure cost me zero dollars.
AVC:
You were also giving away a lot of music for free and doing the Thing A Week series,
which was quite similar to those old They Might Be Giants songs you could dial
up and listen to. Were those songs something you were thinking about when you
were doing the Thing a Week?
JC: I don't think it was something that
I was specifically thinking about, but I was certainly a fan of Dial-A-Song and
I used to call from work, as instructed. It used to say call us free when you call
from work. [Laughs.] I'm not sure I was modeling after it specifically, but it
was somewhere in my head. Since I've done it I've discovered there are at least
a couple of other people who did pretty regular songwriting, song-a-day,
song-a-week, which is not really a surprise when you think about it.
AVC:
Is that the kind of exercise you'd think about doing again? Or do you feel like
you've put yourself through that kind of misery and deadline?
JC: It's funny. I did it because I have
such a problem with deadlines. I hate deadlines. I wanted to learn to deal with
them a little better. It was instructive in that I learned I'm able to do that.
I'm able to force myself to create. But I also don't feel like I'm any better
at it. [Laughs.] Because I still have the same resistance to finishing a song
that I did before I started. It's a hard thing to get over. The creative
process is kind of painful. Not to sound like a jackass, but it's true.
AVC:
There's that birth metaphor that a lot of people use.
JC: Yeah, exactly. I hate that
metaphor. It's awful. But it's a cliché because it's true, I suppose. You know,
I'd like to do it again. Right now, I just don't have the time. I'm playing
live a lot now. The day-to-day running of the business is taking a lot of time.
I was only able to do it because nobody knew who I was. Nobody was e-mailing me
and I wasn't playing anywhere. I had plenty of free time.
AVC:
Speaking of touring, the first time I saw you perform live was a clip somebody
had taped from the Penny Arcade Expo. The thing that struck me was that the
crowd was really, really involved. Is that pretty typical of a Jonathan Coulton
show?
JC: There are moments of involvement.
The clip that was circulating was for the song about zombies called "RE: Your
Brains." When I do that song I teach the audience the part and they sing this
part in the chorus. They're playing the zombies. So that part is especially
participatory and it's always a lot of fun. You'd be surprised how many
different ways there are to act and sing like a zombie. The rest of it: It's
just me with a guitar on the stage. You see a lot of shows where they just get
up there and sort of stare into the bright lights and play their music. I like
it much better when I can see the audience and when I can talk to the audience.
And when the audience can talk to me.
AVC:
Why do you think the sense of humor and non-traditional subject matter is so
taboo to your average singer-songwriter?
JC: It's hard to be taken seriously
when you write funny songs. That sounds like a very obvious thing to say. If
you want to be known as a brilliant singer-songwriter, which most
singer-songwriters would probably cop to wanting, then the funny genre is not
the one that wins the brilliance award in people's minds. It's the same reason
why, if you were a director and you really wanted to get an Oscar, you might
not spend you whole life making Ernest movies—Ernest Goes to Camp. I like it best when I write a
funny song and there's a kernel of sadness to it. That's my favorite thing
ever—when you can sort of cross over from funny to sad.
AVC: Were
you a Dr. Demento listener as a kid or a teenager?
JC: Absolutely. I listened to him all
the time on Sunday nights. He ran across my music and started playing that
zombie song. It was like a dream come true. I remember sitting in the dark with
my radio dial glowing and listening to "Fishheads" or "Hocus Pocus" by Focus or
whatever it was.
AVC:
You do write songs that have a more serious tone—stuff that is less
concerned with humor or fabulous worlds. Do you worry about the humorous songs
overshadowing the others?
JC: To be perfectly honest, yeah. If I
was going to be remembered for something, I would prefer to be remembered for
the serious songwriting that I did. Just saying it, it sounds like a silly
thing to worry about. I generally find that most fans are able to appreciate
both the funny ones and the sad ones. People are smart. People like funny.
People like sad. That's not really a surprise. I try not to worry about it, because
I know its possible to do both.
[pagebreak]
AVC:
You worked as a software coder before getting into music—that seems to be
a focus among much of the geek community. Did you think, when you set out, that
you'd become a kind of bard for the geek crowd? Was that expected or was that a
surprise thing?
JC: I had some inkling that that was
happening. I had written a bunch of songs for this thing called "Little Grey
Book Lectures," which was John Hodgman—who's now a famous author and television
personality I went to college with. He started this reading series in Brooklyn
called the Little Grey Book Lectures. Every month there was a show and every
show had a theme. People would read stuff and give demonstrations. I would
write a song for that theme. They were really wide-ranging—really general
themes. There was one about animals that led me to write "I Crush Everything"—about
the giant squid. There was one about genius, which led me to write "Skullcrusher
Mountain"—the love song from the mad scientist. Without really knowing it,
I was doing a lot of geeky stuff anyway. I was asked to perform at this
conference called Pop! Tech, which is a futurist conference. Scientists and
thinkers and CEOs of technology companies get together to talk about stuff. I
played the song "Mandelbrot Set," which is about the fractal—and when I
got to the part where I actually sang through the equation that generates the
Mandelbrot Set, people stood up and cheered. A little light bulb went off. I
went, "Oh!" I've never really had an audience that I could play that for, who
would get it. I've played it for audiences before and there was always sort of
amusement and confusion.
AVC:
Do you feel like, since then, you've mobilized that community? This is a crowd
that, maybe, doesn't go to concerts that frequently.
JC: You mean, "Am I getting some of the
shut-ins out into the world?"
AVC: I
have a friend who is in IT and one of the first shows he's been to in years was
a show of yours in Chicago.
JC: Really? I never thought about that
before. It's true that you if you get enough like-minded people together and
they start to talk to each other, it becomes a community, whether you want it
or not. I'm amazed. The forums on my website—I don't spend too much time
in there, because I don't have the time to follow everything that's going on.
It's more a space for the fans than anything else. I dip in there every now and
then and it's amazing what's going on. People are playing various games based
on the music. People are getting in touch with each other for meet-ups prior to
shows. "Does anybody have a ticket to this? Or can anybody give me a ride to
the show?" When I played in San Francisco recently there was a group of five or
six or seven people—they were all singletons. Somebody had seven tickets.
They all found each other on the forums. They all went together to the show,
just having met on the forums. I think it's a cool thing. It's not something
that I intended to happen. But I'm certainly delighted that it has happened.
AVC:
You quit coding to start a career in music. And at some point you worked at a
record label. You also had a daughter around the same time you made the
transition into music. Usually people go and get the boring job when they have
the kid. What was your motivation to do something risky right when the daughter
comes rather than sticking to the nine-to-fiver?
JC: I'm a procrastinator. That's really
what it amounts to. It was something I always meant to do and I just never got
around to doing it. I blew through my twenties, which is the easy time to do
it, without ever, really, taking a risk. My daughter was born and immediately,
I felt my own mortality that much more acutely. I think that happens to a lot
of people. You see the person who will grow up and replace you when you die.
[Laughs.] I can keep doing what I'm doing, which is not awful. It was actually
a good job and I enjoyed the work and I liked the people and it was interesting
and everything. But it was a lie. It was not who I was and it was not what I
really wanted to be doing. It seemed really important to set an example. I
imagined her grown up and in this situation, and it was not what I would want
for her. I would want her to quit that job.
AVC:
Was that a scary move, especially at that time?
JC: It seemed really stupid and
selfish. And vain. It didn't make a lot of sense—mostly because I didn't
have a plan. I didn't really know how I was going to make money. It was a hard
thing to say to people. "Why are you leaving your job?" Well, I'm 35 and I think
it's time I became a rock star. I'm really lucky it's worked out as well as it
has.
AVC:
Are you working on an album?
JC: Since Thing A Week I'm unable to think in terms of
albums. I just got so used to writing a song, recording it, and putting it out
there. I can't imagine storing stuff up until I have a whole CD worth of music.
AVC:
The album was always a kind of marketing ploy anyway, right?
JC: Exactly. I am still writing stuff,
although very slowly. I'm trying to write faster.
AVC:
What was your experience working for a label? Did that inform your decision to
self-publish?
JC: I was the assistant to an A&R;
guy at a very small label. It did classical crossover and adult contemporary.
It was a real sort of backwater division of this giant corporation. It wasn't
so much the label business that put me off. It was just a big office. I just
don't like working in offices, I think. It wasn't like I saw a whole lot of
dark, seedy things happening.
AVC:
None of them were throwing televisions out of hotel windows.
JC: Not really. It wasn't the most
glamorous part of the business. My main reason for doing things independently
was that I'm too lazy and too fearful of criticism to go the traditional route
and attempt to get signed. That whole process makes me ill. I did it the easy
way, which I didn't think was going to work. What if I can just put my music on
the Internet and the world will come to me?