Woody Guthrie 2.0?
Jonathan Mann is writing a two minute pop song every day, based on themes suggested by his friends and visitors to his website. He says he’s doing it to keep active and creative whilst he finds himself unemployed at a pretty tricky time to get work. What’s more surprising is that whatever the theme (Battlestar Galactica, LOLcats, Obama, a tour of his house) his tunes are for the most part fantastic, with utterly hummable melodies and witty couplets. Honest reflections on his life, surreal fantasies, and pithy political comment, showing him up as a very rounded, prolific, unpretentious and likeable person.
Anyway, here he is tackling the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a piece of legislation under hot debate in the US, which could go a long way to neutering America’s megabucks union-busting industry. The debate has descended into ‘yes it does’, ‘no it doesn’t’ tit-fot-tat advertising on technicalities between corporate opponents and labour movement allies, which doesn’t really leave anyone the wiser. This song cuts through all that fantastically.
His “Hey Paul Krugman” (which I’ve been whistling for days now) was the perfect combination of bailout economics and pop, should you have been waiting for such a thing, and went 100,000 viral on YouTube. Since then, he’s appeared on MSNBC’s 1600 Pensylvania Avenue (and done them a cracking new theme tune). Hopefully he’s due for much bigger things – so check out his Rock Cookie Bottom project now, before he’s much too important to keep it up!
Tags: digital creatives, Jonathan Mann, pop, Rock Cookie Bottom, video, YouTube
March 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
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March 29th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
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