SindrElf (previously) celebrates the fiftieth birthday of Jonathan Coulton (previously) by creating a 30-minute biographical documentary about his work and career. An enjoyable tour of the classics!

I've been a fan of JoCo since I was 16 in 2007.

I'm old enough to have watched Schoolhouse Rock educational cartoons when they premiered on television.

Lou Cabron writes, "Jonathan Coulton re-visited his album/graphic novel 'Solid State' (previously) over the weekend with new comments about how it applies to today's world. 'When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now',' Coulton said in 2017 (in an epilogue to the graphic novel). — Read the rest

The marvellous Jonathan Coulton (previously) is crowdfunding for his next album, Some Guys, "An album of 70s soft rock covers that sound exactly like the originals" (America, Stephen Bishop, Gilbert O'Sullivan, 10cc, Bread, Eagles and more) — he's raised more than $100K already with 12 days to go (I just backed him). — Read the rest

Because you are a Boing Boing reader, you probably know who Jonathan Coulton is. He was a computer programmer who happened to be a wonderful singer/songwriter. In 2005 he quit his coding job and became a full-time musician, writing and recording catchy songs that won the hearts of nerds around the world. — Read the rest

Jonathan Coulton is known for a myriad of distinct accomplishments. The tech professional-turned-musician once conducted a Thing a Week experiment, in which he recorded and published a new song every Friday for a year, produced a cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" infamously adopted by the Fox series Glee, regularly contributes to the NPR quiz show "Ask Me Another" as its very own one-man band, and runs his own fan cruise aptly called the JoCo Cruise.

While delightful on their own terms, the icing on the cake of the Portal games has always been the songs by Jonathan Coulton that play over their end credits.

Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak launch a crowdfunding campaign to create a series of comic books based on characters from Coulton's songs

You'll have heard that Jonathan Coulton's iconic cover of Baby's Got Back was plagiarised by the Fox TV show "Glee" (it's not the first time). Coulton's story has been widely reported, but Fox/Glee have remained shameless about this.

Coulton's got a brilliant solution to this: he's released a "cover" of Glee's plagiarized version of his song, put it on Itunes as a rival to the official Fox version, and has announced that the proceeds will go to charity. — Read the rest

Jonathan Coulton has publicly shamed Fox for plagiarizing his arrangement for "Baby's Got Back" on its TV show "Glee":

Hey look, @gleeonfox ripped off my cover of Baby Got Back: bit.ly/WME9Ho. Never even contacted me. Classy.

— Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) January 18, 2013

Writing on Techdirt, Mike Masnick has a good, nuanced view of how this kind of thing works:

Yes, his is a cover song, but he introduced some variations that appear to be directly copied in Glee.

Craig sez, "Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick have a new Christmas album out entitled 'One Christmas at a Time.' One of the songs, called '2600,' is a tribute to the classic 80's video game console. Here's an unofficial video for '2600.'" — Read the rest

CaptainValor gives Jonathan Coulton's delightfully filthy "First of May" song an enthusiastic American sign language interpretation with two backup signers. This is the gesture-set that JoCo's material truly demands.

Jonathan Coulton – First of May – ASL Song

(via Beth Pratt)

Craig sez, "This is a music video I've edited for the song 'Down Today' by Jonathan Coulton (from his 2011 album, 'Artificial Heart,' produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants) using footage from public domain films mostly found on Archive.org. — Read the rest

In this video announcing They Might Be Giants' next tour, the lads construct a gigantic pink monster truck hearse. And sing a fine song!

They Might Be Giants are going on tour across the United States starting January 27th in Santa Cruz.

Video link. Boing Boing fave Jonathan Coulton had his peppy song "Shop•Vac" given the kinetic type treatment by designer Jarrett Heather. The sheer amount of brand references in the typography will surely please the brand geeks and font geeks among us. — Read the rest

Here's Yeshmin, a YouTube character whose schtick is somewhere between Yakov Smirnov and Andy Kauffman, wandering the halls of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX: a nerdgasmic gamer/culture convention run by the Penny Arcade webcomic), chatting with the likes of Wil Wheaton and Jonathan Coulton. — Read the rest

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's got the Jonathan Coulton video for The Future Soon, my fave JoCo song (I like it so much I used a line from it as a story title):

From that hairy cyborg bastard Jonathan Coulton's spanking new concert DVD, "Best.

Eric from Creative Commons sez,

Creative Commons is in the midst of its annual fundraising campaign. To help support us, Jonathan Coulton has released his greatest hits compilation "JoCo Looks Back" on limited edition CC-branded USB drives that come stocked not only with the standard mixes of the album's songs, but also the unmixed audio stems (i.e.

Check out these awesome ukulele covers of Jonathan Coulton's Still Alive, the closing song from Portal, one of the most original and genuinely witty games I've seen since Katamari Damacy. I'm especially fond of the mop-haired kid in the Cyberdog tee, and the lady below is no slouch, either, she's the Angus from AC/DC of videogame uke covers! — Read the rest

Aaron Hertzmann says:

There's a long article in today's New York Times Magazine (and video) about geeky folk-rock singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, who distributes all his music online, and spends six hours a day communicating with his fans. The article discusses the state of music promotion and distribution for the "B-list" musicians who use online forums to communicate with their fans and spread the word.