In Praise Of: The Music of Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner, the world's greatest Flash-animated web series, recently released the Homestar Runner Original Soundtrack, containing 20 years of tunes from the site. Here, Zach commemorates the music, from its context as pastiche to its quality as bedroom pop.

"I don't want to take any chances. We should play in a band, just to be safe." 

Have you ever identified so closely with something - a person, a place, a form of media - that it becomes a central part of your identity?

Of course you have - you’re a human being. 

There are numerous communities that I have been a part of in my life that have been influential in shaping who I am. As a child, I was raised Mormon, and while no longer a part of the church, it instilled in me a moral character and outlook I abide by in life. Starting in high school, I got involved with the local DIY/punk scene in my area, which was the segue needed for me to FINALLY come out and be proud of my queer identity. All the while, I was cooking up a storm, working in restaurants and fulfilling my vocation in life to be a chef. All of these aspects are central to, and at the forefront of who I am.

But NOTHING is more central to who I am than the greatest website ever created - www.homestarrunner.com 

Homestar Runner is my DNA. For one, my sense of humor and what I enjoy in film, television, and other types of “viewing content” was fully formed by the site alone. Coincidentally, all the communities I was a part of growing up ALSO knew of and enjoyed the website; any reference you could think of was used in daily conversation constantly. But most importantly, Homestar Runner made me passionate about the one form of art, other than cooking, that I cannot live without: MUSIC. 

But what exactly IS Homestar Runner, other than some fancy-shmancy website? Well, it could very well be the most important website EVER in shaping what we now know as Internet culture.

Homestar Runner began as a parody children’s book, The Homestar Runner Enters The Strongest Man in the World Contest, written by Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel (who is recently known for directing episodes of HBO’s The Leftovers and the formerly blacklisted film The Hunt) in 1996. After encouragement from friends and family, Mike decided with his brother, Matt (who would later work as a writer on Yo Gabba Gabba! and Gravity Falls), to make an interactive, cartoon website using Flash-animation, ultimately launching it in January of 2000. Throughout the early aughts, Homestar was pivotal in shaping the tone of the Internet to come, if not fully by format (for, alas, Flash is Dead), then by humor. 

Homestar is an intimate reflection of the Brothers Chaps’ deep, wondrous pop cultural lexicon. Mixing a love of video games, film/television, and music from their childhood onward with surreal humor, non-sequiturs and parody, the toons of Homestar Runner are endlessly watchable, unique in vision, and the exemplar of reference humor through osmosis. By interconnecting an extensive range of source material and creating a world to exist in, the site would go on to define how we converse on Reddit, what we watch on YouTube, and whatever the hell else came after 2003. But the jokes themselves would not nearly work as well as they do if it weren’t for the characters, whose uber-defined personalities are largely owed to their respective tastes in music.

There’s Coach Z, the slovenly, kinda homeless sportsman who is Free Country, USA’s resident hip hop head - just listen to “These Peoples Try to Fade Me,” or check out his Halloween costumes. There’s Marzipan, Homestar’s on-again-off-again girlfriend who is both the town’s only girl and guitarist. With a love of singer-songwriters from Willie Nelson to Prince, she can chop axes with the best of ‘em. There’s Strong Sad, the resident music nerd who most closely resembles a “hipster” or “scene kid.” From a look at his blog, Strong Sad’s Lament, he listens to everything alternative - The Cure, Fugazi, The Promise Ring, Thursday, even Godspeed You! Black Emperor. 

But perhaps most importantly of all, there’s Strong Bad, the boxing glove-wearing luchador whose love of music (and, more specifically, \m/ METAL \m/) follows him wherever he goes - particularly at his computer when answering his emails. The most well-known feature on the website, Strong Bad Email (with individual episodes referred to as “sbemails”), finds the character answering questions from fans in a mocking, escalating way. It was here where Trogdor the Burninator burst his way into the minds of the early Internet generation with medieval riffage, and where Strong Bad taught viewers the construct of all techno songs with “The System Is Down.” 

By creating characters that are music obsessed, the Brothers Chaps were able to firmly root the site’s musical humor in pastiche, something they are the preeminent purveyors of. But it wasn’t just jokes about music they were making...they made the music itself. 

In November 2003, the CD compilation Strong Bad Sings (and Other Type Hits) was released, a collaboration between the Brothers Chaps and the Athens, GA based geek-rock band Y-O-U. It featured songs that were central to the early popularity of the site - “Trogdor,” “The System Is Down,” “Everybody to the Limit” - as well as new songs made by bands established within its expansive universe. 

Such songs include “Moving Very Slowly” by Taranchula, a Scandanavian death metal band that knows how to drop D tune, and “Because, It’s Midnite” by Limozeen, a hair metal band from Staten Island. One thing about the album? It rocked - so much so, that two of its songs were featured in Guitar Hero: “Trogdor” in Guitar Hero II, and “Because, It’s Midnite” in Guitar Hero: Rock of Ages. 

Strong Bad Sings demonstrated that the pastiche of Homestar was not only enjoyable for its gag value, but was being accepted for what it was: great freakin’ music. The Brothers Chaps made the claim that they should not only be considered humorists for the content they made, but rather be seen as something else entirely: the musician’s musicians. 

Which is why it delights me to report that we now get to listen, examine, and lose ourselves in every little ditty laid to Casio by Matt & Mike. April 10th of this year saw the official release of the three-volume Homestar Runner Original Soundtrack: Songs, Background Music, Jingles and Worse (and there are even more planned!). From pastiches galore to incidental, instrumental, and score pieces, the 180 total tracks comprise a gargantuan collection that confirms exactly why the brothers are deserving of the praise I have been decreeing. 

The songs featured are thematically absurd while flaunting knowledge of the deepest musical corners of cassette culture. Across the collection, my personal highlights include “Fish Eyes Lens,” a tribute to the Beastie Boys; “Trudgemank,” a rap-metal fusion in the style of the Judgement Night soundtrack; “Really Great Gas Mileage,” a Postal Service styled banger that could feature in a Nissan commercial; “Il Cartographer,” the entrance song for Strong Bad’s wrestling persona of the same name; “Sweaty Overweight Jam,” by Tenerence Love, a heavy-set R&B crooner; and “Loading Screens,” a song about all the loading screens as seen before the site’s toons. (In actuality, I love every single song. Because I’m a nerd.)

But the true glory of the soundtrack is its collection of incidental pieces, infectious micro-tunes that predated the [adult swim] bumpers of a similar make by nearly two years. Ranging from just over 10 seconds to just under a minute, these lo-fi vignettes condense the sounds from the preeminent twee, bedroom pop and indietronica records of the brothers’ time into welcoming, comforting and heartwarming melodies and tones. They score chaos with fervor, provide the perfect backdrop for a deadpan delivery, and glisten with whimsy. They could feature in an arcade game down on the boardwalk, or find themselves on a mixtape with Guided by Voices.

There’s unquestionably a lot of nostalgia attached to these jingles for me, and if it over-hypes to an unrecognizable degree I can understand. But I won’t apologize for that nostalgia, as these tunes are an outlet of escapism for me, into a world where goofball characters and the universe they occupy shields the reality of the outside world. 

Needless to say, if not musicians of the same technical ability, then the Brothers Chaps are musicians of the same ethos and spiritual caliber as their influences. It comes as no surprise then, that the two have directed music videos for various bands across the indie spectrum. They directed the video to of Montreal’s “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse” in 2007, a song from one of the group’s indie-classic Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? But the brother’s connection to of Montreal is more important than mere musical collaboration, for former band member James Huggins gave the brothers their titular character’s namesake when once attempting to refer to Atlanta Braves player, Mark Lemke. 

The band also was responsible for Folk Implosion’s “Brand of Skin,” which could be my favorite of Lou Barlow’s non-Dinosaur Jr. projects. However, I believe that I and many other of the site’s fans would agree that the brothers’ best collaborations have been with New York’s “Kings of Weird Rock,” They Might Be Giants. 

With a relationship built on mutual admiration for their respective crafts, the two parties first collaborated when the two Johns wrote and performed the instrumental to the song “Different Town” from sbemail #99, and later when the brothers created a toon for the song “Experimental Film” off the 2004 album The Spine. This toon would serve as the official music video, and be featured prominently on the site - paving another avenue of musical exploration to travel down for fans of all ages, an audience that Homestar Runner represents. The favor was once again returned when Strong Bad answered his 200th e-mail, when John Linell sang the toon’s opening song as the Poopsmith, breaking the character’s vow of silence.

When musicians forge their own path with a DIY ethos, I always respect them; but when they appeal to a niche audience, are nutty with pasticcio, and are quirky as hell, I tend to love them the most. I can thank the Brothers Chaps, and their ever-so admirable Homestar Runner, for instilling this in me. And with two hours of music now available to stream at one’s convenience, the Homestar Runner OST will hopefully go on to serve as the definitive musical testament of their careers. But more than that, show once and for all that they’re the They Might Be Giants of the Internet age.