Birthday Quote 01 Dec

Jonathan Coulton (born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are Code Monkey, Re: Your Brains and Want You Gone. His album Artificial Heart was the first to chart, eventually reaching #1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers and #125 in the Billboard 200.

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 1st 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. "Re: Your Brains" made an appearance as an easter egg in Left 4 Dead 2. The song has been called "the most influential (in) game music". In 2011, Coulton followed up the success of "Still Alive" with a new song at the end of Portal 2, "Want You Gone". He also wrote the song "You Wouldn't Know" for Lego Dimensions.

Coulton releases his songs 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 video for the song "Shop Vac"

"But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake."

Jonathan Coulton

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