Also, who knew that zombies can be reasonable?

Today’s track is “RE: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton

Jonathan Coulton is probably one of the most famous geek-celebrities in the world; you may recognize him from his two major hits “Still Alive” and “Want You Gone” from Valve’s Portal series. But of course, those are not the only successes he has; many of his songs are geek anthems around the world. And while most of his songs seem calmed rock ballads, the lyrics to them are quite well written and pretty damn funny most of the time.

This time I’ll be talking about “RE: Your Brains”. It starts out simple, talking about what would be your typical office talk between colleagues and such, when suddenly you hear “…except I’m zombie now.” (If the title wasn’t enough to tell you what the song is about). So yeah, it is pretty much taking about the zombie apocalypse. Though what makes this song special is that we are not listening to the survivors talk about how difficult it is to get through it like it usually is, it is the zombies’ part of the story talking about how they envision the survivors’ struggle to keep them out of reach and how frustrating it can be, even to the point to negotiation.

Of course you are thinking right now “Zombies don’t think, they’re not rational at all!”. And yeah, most fiction will tell you that zombies are irrational and act solely on instinct, but this is what makes me like the song and why it is so special. It gives us a hypothetical situation “what if zombies do think and act like normal people?”. It is really fascinating to hear them acting like that and also really funny. I think this song defines JoCo’s style as a whole. The kind of calmed and catchy tune (at least most of them) with the sensible and non-sensical but funny lyrics, that is pretty much his style and I must truly emphasize “his”. There are other geek-musicians out there that do the same thing as Jonathan Coulton, but they don’t truly match his unique style. Like I said before, his Portal songs are probably his most popular ones, but “RE: Your Brains” is probably is his third most popular. It is that good and defines JoCo as the musician he is.

You can find this song on his website http://www.jonathancoulton.com/ or on iTunes, you can also find this song on the Rock Band Music Store. It also appears on the Left 4 Dead 2 soundtrack.


So that’s all for now, please be sure to check out the Requests Thread on the VOG Forums for suggestions and comments on future ILTS articles! Until next time, keep on listenin’!