User:Ekai/Songaday

Jonathan Mann
Background information
Origin	Westford, Vermont
Genres	Folk rock, freak folk, nerd rock
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Guitar, banjo, ukulele, piano
Years active	2005–present
Website	http://www.jonathanmannmusic.com/

Jonathan Mann (born April 9, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter, best known for creating and publishing a new song and video each day since January, 2009.

Several of his songs have garnered national attention. Mann performed his "Hey Paul Krugman" song live on the Rachel Maddow Show. Apple CEO Steve Jobs played Mann's video for "The iPhone Antenna" song at the start of a press conference Apple held to address iPhone 4 antenna issues. Janet Hill, the wife of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, commissioned Mann to produce a song in honor of Wozniak's 60th birthday.

A former computer programmer and self-described geek, Coulton tends to write quirky, witty lyrics about science fiction and technology: a man who thinks in simian terms, a mad scientist who falls in love with one of his captives, and the dangers of bacteria. Rare topical songs include 2005's "W's Duty", which sampled President George W. Bush, and 2006's "Tom Cruise Crazy". 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, and glockenspiel.

Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale, where he was a member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs and the Yale Spizzwinks(?). He is now the Contributing Troubadour at Popular Science magazine, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a five-song set by him called Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms. He is also the Musical Director for The Little Gray Book Lectures.

Career

Coulton's best-known works include his light-acoustic cover of the Sir Mix-a-Lot hit song "Baby Got Back" and original pieces such as "Code Monkey", which has been featured on Slashdot on April 23, 2006, and linked from the webcomic Penny Arcade. It was the theme song for an animated show on G4 called Code Monkeys.

His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Good Morning Silicon Valley featured a link to a video set to his song "Re: Your Brains".

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. Hodgman has also 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. Coulton wrote and performed "the winning entry", a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton appeared on the tour for Hodgman's newest book, More Information Than You Require.

Coulton composed the title music for the show Mystery Diagnosis.

Coulton also has released other songs under "The Little Gray Book Lectures".

In 2006, Coulton began touring with and co-wrote a song with comedy-duo Paul and Storm entitled "Your Love Is", which appeared on their album News to Us. They have since toured together almost exclusively, rarely appearing with other artists.

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. A version with Coulton's vocals was also included on the Orange Box Original Soundtrack, in addition to the one heard at the end of the game. The song has been called "the most influential game music".

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 the aforementioned song "Still Alive" on its Rock Band version, along with guest "musicians" and geek/celebrities Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Veronica Belmont.

Coulton opened for They Might Be Giants for a few shows of their March 2010 tour.

Coulton had been working on his follow-up to the Thing a Week albums, tentatively titled The Aftermath. It has since been stated that the title is merely an umbrella term to classify non-album tracks released after Thing a Week. On May 25, 2010, Coulton said on his official site that he would be working on a new album, to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and for the first time ever with a full band, including Marty Beller of They Might Be Giants, in a professional recording studio. They're scheduled to perform as a full band for a few shows before returning to New York to start recording the new album, for which a few new songs have already been written.

Licensing

Coulton releases his song 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 for the song "Shop Vac".

Thing a Week

From September 16, 2005, to September 30, 2006, Coulton ran "Thing a Week", during which he recorded 52 musical pieces 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 Creative Commons to support himself. Early indications are that the experiment succeeded in generating a large number of high quality songs, boosting sales of music downloads, expanding Coulton's public presence and enlarging his fan base. The success of the financial objective is more difficult to judge, but Coulton was quoted in a September 2006 interview as stating that "in some parts of the country, I'd be making a decent living". In a February 25, 2008, interview with This Week in Tech, he stated 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.

Discography

Main article: Jonathan Mann discography

Albums

• "Song A Day: Year Three" (2011)
• "Song A Day: Year Two" (2011)
• "Song A Day: Year One" (2010)
• "Barefoot in the Family Tree EP" (2009)
• "Tonight I'm Gonna Shave My Head" (2007)
• "The Mushroom Singdom Vol. 0-3 " (2007)
• "The Mario Opera: Acts 2 + 3 Demos" (2006)
• "The Mario Opera: Act 1 (demos)" (2005)
• "Songs for Girls" (2005)
• "There Are So Many Possibilities" (2004)
• "I've Got A Bigger Radio" (2004)
• "Novox The Robot" (2004)

Compilations

• JoCo Looks Back (2008)

Other releases

• Other Experiments (Rarities Collection) (2005)
• Unplugged (Live on Second Life) (2006)
• The Orange Box Original Soundtrack (2007)
  • 1. Still Alive (Sung by Ellen McLain)
  • 19. Still Alive (Sung by Jonathan Coulton)
• The Aftermath (2009)

Most of Coulton's songs are published on his website as MP3 and FLAC downloads. Many 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" is the only exception to this, as Coulton assigned all rights for the song to Valve. Along with "Still Alive", Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" appears in jukeboxes in Left 4 Dead 2, another game designed by Valve.

External links

• Official website
• Official website
• Jonathan Mann on Myspace