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Daniel Johnston's Essential Songs: Listen to 12 Tracks

In his home in rural Texas, on the eve of his final tour in 2017, singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston told me that he wanted to have a big song someday, what he called “a real hit.” That smash eluded him, but the cascade of poignant, often slyly funny songs he compulsively churned out over the past four decades garnered him a cult fan base that included Kurt Cobain, Beck, Jeff Tweedy and Lana Del Rey. His lyrics chronicled universal themes like loneliness, despair and unrequited love, but did so on almost uncomfortably personal terms. His struggles with mental illness were rarely far from the surface, and though he wrote about his world with childlike wonder, the emotions coursing through his music were often complex and heartbreaking. Here are 12 of his essential songs.

Daniel Johnston's Essential Songs: Listen to 12 Tracks

‘Like a Monkey in a Zoo’ (1981)

This scratchy, lo-fi recording that appeared on “Songs of Pain” was reportedly made on a $59 boombox. Beneath Johnston’s jaunty piano playing and his gee-whiz voice lurks a dark, embittered and presumably autobiographical account of living as an artistically gifted but psychologically addled eccentric: “The days go so slow/I don’t have no friends,” Johnston sings. “Except all these people who want me to do tricks for them/Like a monkey in a zoo.”

‘The Story of an Artist’ (1982)

Set to a wistful, enduring piano melody — a remarkably similar one propelled “Mia & Sebastian’s Theme (Late for the Date)” from the Oscar-winning film “La La Land” — Johnston sings mournfully about the emotional price of making art in the face of criticism and indifference on this track from “Don’t Be Scared.” Lyrics like “We think you have a problem/And this problem’s made you ill” nodded at the singer’s battle with what he said was manic depression, but the theme was universal enough for Apple to feature the song in a 2018 MacBook commercial.

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‘Man Obsessed’ (1982)

A darkly comic tune sung with the angry-young-man snarl of a youthful Elvis Costello. The titular man seems to be Johnston himself, and his obsession, a real-life high school crush named Laurie Allen. She remained a muse for Johnston throughout his life despite the fact that their relationship remained platonic and Allen married an undertaker. “The only way you could get her to look at you,” Johnston sneers on the track from “The What of Whom,” “is to die.”

‘Peek a Boo’ (1982)

This naked piano ballad may be Johnston’s most lucid attempt to give voice to the desperation he often felt living with mental illness. He compares it to “trying to make sense out of scrambled eggs” and “being kidnapped by a dark wolf,” but doesn’t want listeners to get lost in the metaphors. “You can listen to these songs/Have a good time and walk away,” he sings in the devastating last verse. “But for me, it’s not that easy/I have to live these songs forever.”

‘Speeding Motorcycle’ (1983)

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Played with goofy abandon on a cheap organ, this song off “Yip/Jump Music” abounds with whimsical couplets, but Johnston’s angst is never far from the surface: “Pretty girls have taken you for a ride/Hurt you deep inside/but you never slowed down.” The track became a Johnston signature, and was covered by indie-rock lifers including Yo La Tengo, the Pastels and Mary Lou Lord.

‘Devil Town’ (1990)

Johnston grew up in an evangelical family, and religion exerted a subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, influence on his writing. On this song from “1990,” singing in a remarkably clear and powerful voice with no instrumental accompaniment about “living in a Devil town” where “all my friends are vampires,” he sounds positively haunted.

‘Some Things Last a Long Time’ (1990)

Working with the New York-based producer known simply as Kramer, Johnston’s spare piano meditation on yearning and unrequited love is enhanced with understated adornments — a lone guitar squawk, shimmering background noise, ghostly backing vocals.

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‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ (1990)

Perhaps Johnston’s most well-known song — it’s just him, two chords strummed on an acoustic guitar, and it’s over in less than two minutes. But the hopeful message resonates deeply: This isn’t a declaration of blind faith in the idea expressed in the title, but rather, as he sings, it’s “a promise with a catch,” a mantra-like belief that the dogged search for true love may be the reward, in and of itself.

‘My Life Is Starting Over’ (1991)

Despite his cult status, Johnston harbored very real commercial ambitions, and by this time in his career, he’d begun to attract attention and praise from iconic underground rock bands like Sonic Youth and Half Japanese. The energetic opening track to his 1991 album “Artistic Vice” — which was produced again by Kramer but now with a full band in tow — finds Johnston reveling in the newfound attention, albeit with a sly nod and a wink: “My fame is spreading cross the land/Now I’ve got me a band.”

‘Life in Vain’ (1994)

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Johnston’s lone major label album, “Fun,” failed to generate the commercial breakthrough he wished for, but at moments like this one, it pointed to what might have been. Produced by Butthole Surfers guitarist Paul Leary, the song delivers Johnston’s existential pain and longing (“It’s so tough to be alive when you feel like the living dead”) amid delicate acoustic guitar picking and warm string parts. Johnston’s emotional state (and voice) sounds no less shaky than usual, but the support system around him keeps nudging him to press on.

‘Mountain Top’ (2003)

Some fans of Johnston’s relentlessly lo-fi early work were disappointed with “Fear Yourself,” his 2003 album, which was rather lavishly produced by the Sparklehorse founder Mark Linkous. But songs like “Mountain Top” are a testament to the power of Johnston’s writing. Amid the bang and clatter of a raucous, propulsive arrangement, the song’s sense of longing and despair slices through the noise and is elevated by it.

‘High Horse’ (2009)

Johnston loved the Beatles above all else, and here, working with fellow Fab Four enthusiast Jason Falkner on a track from “Is and Always Was,” he gets his most Beatlesque production. Buoyed by bouncy piano chords and a ringing lead guitar lick, Johnston is still pining for the love beyond his reach, but this time with a welcome bit of resentment creeping into his voice: “Looking down from your high horse/Like I didn’t matter, of course.” Johnston never really got either a love interest or his pop hit, but in some weird, beautiful, alternate universe, this song would have netted him both.

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