It Didn't Mean Anything to Me.....

Rarely can I say that a song has gotten me through a hard time. Rarely do I identify with the desperate sense of genius behind a bare-bones recording, and say "hey, I could really give that another listen!"

Jonathan Coulton- Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance

Jonathon wrote this about the local weather man in NYC. And I don't know if the lifestyle implied of the guy is true. But I'll tell you this- you want Soterios Johnson to keep dancing. Because there's something so urgent that's been infused into this song. It reminds me of some terrible Spring days when I just didn't want to wake up, but I did wake up, and now I'm glad. At last I knew it would be sunny.

Jonathon Coulton- Mandelbrot Set

It's always weird recommending a song about math to my friends. But if you actually listen to the lyrics, not only do you realize that they're hilarious....but that they're actually really good too. You can actually learn math by listening to this song, and it's intensely enjoyable to listen to. I've had several very impressionable teachers even in my high school years; should I ever go anywhere good at all, I pray tat I'll be able to write about one of them in a light manner one day. The thing about this song is the chorus.....it's just such a smooth succession of things that you'll find yourself repeating it later on in the day. Add in a fairly cool bridge and you have a song that, while bare-bones in appearance, is actually quite fleshy, and quite good.

Jonathan Coulton- Ikea

Let's not beat around the bush- we've all shopped at Ikea. Bought charming Swedish pieces of furniture; the kind that art-deco people despise and ordinary people venerate for its price-to-performance ratio. Like every other Coulton song, the humor is pretty well rounded; sharply satirical, but not at all biting. Any song that mentions college kids and divorced men in the same lyrical sentence should be worth revealing to the world, and when it is wrapped in a package like the rest of this song, it's a pity to see it buried. Not something that I would play over and over again, but certainly worth at least several listens to get everything that's said.