Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston was a lo-fi musician and artist with a well-known history of mental illness, including psychotic episodes that saw him committed to an asylum. His work conveys a childlike quality on the surface but second impressions, however, often reveal “simple, emotionally direct, and sometimes profoundly affecting” expressions of emotion and commentary on the human condition.

Originally inspired by an engaged female student at his college he had a crush on who told him that she liked his songs, his career began when he started handing out homemade recordings to friends and strangers in the early 1980s, telling them “Hi, how are you? I’m Daniel Johnston, and I’m gonna be famous.”.

The independent record label Homestead took interest and began releasing Johnston’s music. In the early 1990s, as the grunge band Nirvana was becoming one of the biggest rock bands of all time, band leader Kurt Cobain regularly mentioned Johnston in interviews and wore shirts with his album art. Cobain also named Johnston’s Yip/Jump Music album as one of his all-time favorites. This gave Johnston wide public exposure, leading to major record labels courting him. He refused to sign with Elektra because he didn’t want to be on the same label as Metallica (he viewed them as Satanists who wanted to hurt him), so he signed with Atlantic in 1994. After low sales of his next album, Atlantic dropped him in 1996 – but this didn’t slow his drive or his musical output.

A 2005 documentary titled The Devil and Daniel Johnston, examining how his diagnosis of schizophrenia impacted his life and career, gained him further fame. During this time, with his brother acting as his manager, Johnston was able to travel and perform around the world for a decade.

In 2018, the city of Austin, Texas declared January 22 as “Hi How Are You Day” to mark Johnston’s contributions to art and music. Johnston passed away in his home of a heart attack in 2019.