Today I'm writing my first article about my favourite artist ever:
✨️Jack Stauber✨️
Jack Stauber is a 29yrs old musician, animator, and filmmaker from Pennsylvania.
He started when he was only 16 with his first album "Finite Form" (2013)
Jack Stauber is known worldwide for his quirky, surreal, and weird sense of childhood nostalgia (a taste that bring you back to a time where you were younger that you can't fully remember)
art style that's hard to describe but easy to appreciate.
His music and videos have, most (if not all)
of them a disturbing or scary undertone.
He rose to fame on YouTube (3,49 million subscribers 🤯) with his unconventional animated music videos that have amassed millions of views, such as:
• "Buttercup" - a viral hit of 2018, adored by meme creators worldwide (we see you, you "weird kids" on the Internet during 2020)
and
• "Oh Klahoma" - about the struggle with comforting a friend at a party.
Both of them come from Stauber’s most recognizable album - "Pop Food" (2017).
He has also independently released several other albums, including:
funky "HiLo" (2018)
and folky "Viator" (2015).
Also, under the name "Jack Stauber's Micropop" he publishes brief musical pieces from his social media, as well as extended versions of the short songs featured on his YouTube channel and other related unpublished content and two original tape for his works with Adult Swim
Stauber has an incredibly versatile singing voice that allows him to effortlessly reach both low bass notes and high falsetto ranges. It’s worth mentioning that he voices almost each of the characters in his animations
To experience Stauber’s art is to enter a world of bone-chilling animations, abstract music, and strange characters that defy explanation. He's a master of combining different mediums, animation methods, and styles, like claymation, 3D animations in Blender, digital brutalism, VHS, etc. I love how his works are all at once playful and unsettling, dreamlike and nightmarish.
There’s this saying: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”, and I think Jack Stauber lives and breathes it.
In his music, Jack likes to dwell on subjects like social anxiety, depression, the unfairness of life, finding purpose, God, and questioning reality. It spans multiple genres, from indie pop to electronic. Many people classify it as Weirdcore. His art is experimental in the best sense of the word. Jack is not afraid to push boundaries, take risks, and explore uncharted territory with the inventive use of sampling and unconventional song structures.
Now let's talk about one of Jack Stauber's greatest work:
📼 SHOP: A Pop Opera
This musical mini-series from 2019 is Jack Stauber’s true masterpiece. In seven, short episodes he captures many daily existential problems and crises in a quirky, fun way.
It tells a story of a guy in a supermarket, who goes through his grocery list, and meets some people along the way. Each person causes the protagonist to massively overthink his life. It’s unique, a bit creepy, and totally rewatchable.
The soundtrack for the SHOP was released a year later, in 2020. It contains these awesome tracks:
🥛 "Milk" - a sad song about expired milk, asking some essential questions like "What kind of life did you live through?", motivating you to step out of your comfort zone from time to time, and trying out new things
🍞 "Bread" - focuses on shallowness, caring too much about self-image and material things, and worrying about what people other people may think of you
🧻 "Paper Towels" - discusses mess, shows anxiety over not being able to fix everything, and suggests that you can just accept what’s "Out of my hands"
🥣 "Oatmeal" - shows the contrast: routines vs chaos, and maybe suggest that you’re unable to plan everything because life is too unpredictable, and uncertain
☕️ "Coffee" (my personal favourite)- states the important question about dependency, and the desire for coffee, or anything else, really: "Do I NEED it to survive?". It makes you think of your unhealthy addictions, their impact, and self-control
🧀 "Cheese" - is about grief and going through the 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance
The "Finale" song sums up the whole shopping story, underlining that choice-making may be hard, but when you break from stagnation and the over-thinking circle, you’ll make your life better (and tastier).
[Verse]
I could (I could)
I trust I would pick something better (Better, better, oh-ooh-ooh)
My choice, it's a decision I make
To be a good go-getter
[Chorus]
Every milk will expire
So toss your oatmeal and eat something new
(Eat something new, new, new, woop)
Coffee moderation
Life is messy and your bread isn't you (You, you, you, you)
(Oh no, your bread isn't you)
— "Finale" song lyrics
There are thousands of other Jack Stauber’s creations, that I could recommend to you, but the absolute essentials are:
• "New Normal" -It’s great both lyrically and visually 🫶
sounds like a mix of Radiohead, and The Cure
• "Rain" - a short and sad, black & white cartoon about the unfairness of life
• "Hamantha" - a cool song about a girl with ham for a head
• OPAL - short, nightmarish claymation film from the year 2020. It tells the story of an investigation of a haunted house by a girl named Opal (who would have imagined that? Jokes aside i absolutely love it so much and really advise you to go see it)
• "Dead Weight" - the most popular song from "HiLo" album, about not meeting society's expectations
• "Peppermint" - a crazy catchy duet song with Lexi Medgaus, sound like an old radio jingle or a song from the Adventure Time series
And the ones that I just love so much and need everyone to listen to:
• "Two Time" - (my second favourite) This song tells the story and perspectives of someone who is two timing and cheating on their partner
• "Fighter" - (probably my all time favourite, I have it on every single one of my playlists) one of Jack Stauber's most famous and iconic song
(Really popular from animation meme)
Now for the bad news:
The last thing he published was in 2021. Ever since that, he's been silent. I really hope he will return soon with more amazingly-weird content.
(We miss you Jack please come back)
Anyway I hope you enjoyed that article and that it made you discover and listen to the pure and unfiltered genius that Jack Stauber is!
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