Daniel Johnston’s ‘1990’ (Album Review)

By Emily Toone

I took notice of Daniel Johnston when I was recommended the ever so subtly agonising song, ‘Story of an Artist’, released in 1982. My adoration for Johnston, though, transpired from listening to 1990, an album so personal it feels like an intrusion to listen to. I am always in awe of any artist who allows vulnerability to permeate their music, and Johnston brings this to a new level with 1990, the name signifying the year the album was released in. Set apart from his previous ten albums that are beset with the lo-fi intonation of home-recorded cassette tapes, the part-studio recorded album intended to bring with it a professional genesis for Johnston. However, this objective soon fell through due to the unreliability of his personal circumstances, turning 1990 into an amalgamation of studio, home, and live recordings. This curates an intimate charm which  streams down the centre of the album thanks to the unconventionality of the artist. People like Daniel Johnston don’t have artistic influences, they don’t learn music, they just possess the inexplicable and natural ability to create it. Johnston would not pay any mind to the fact that he had a devoted following spanning from Kurt Cobain to David Bowie. He simply did not care; his sole purpose was to make music and that is what he did. 

Johnston was not a typically trained musician, having no formal training in instrument or voice. However, the emotion that seems innate within his vocals are what many trained musicians spend their whole career attempting to emulate. This passion climaxes in songs like the a cappella rendition of ‘Careless Soul’ in which Johnston is reduced to tears halfway through. The absence of instrumental assistance gives us nothing to hide behind, forcing us to listen to and partake in the breakdown of a man which is only perpetuated by the absence of an accompaniment. Moments like this on 1990 are what make it a heart-altering listen and it’s these same moments which brew an inexplicable guilt for listening to it. Such emotional expressions are bound to breed internal contention within the listener. Johnston shares his soul with us in his music and to not appreciate that to its full extent would be to not see 1990 for what it is. 

You wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking you recognise the title ‘Careless Soul’ as it is adapted from a traditional Christian Gospel hymn. In fact, much of this album is comprised of Christian influences, with Johnston choosing to close it with the haunting ‘Softly and Tenderly’, a song that is noticeably disparate from the rest of the album, being a recording of what seems to be a singing church congregation. Johnston’s choice to close the album with this song was an interesting one, but one that tells us all we need to know about the centralised purpose of the album. Due to his prolonged battle with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, Johnston became fixated on the devil and channelled his anti-satanism into an ardent devotion to religion. That’s why the Christian pieces ‘Lord Give Me Hope’ and ‘Held the Hand’ shine through in this album where the intensity of the piano is emblematic of Johnston’s struggle with faith and mental illness at this time.

 It's clear that Johnston was a Christian. He wrote songs about God and Satan and faith and everything in between. So why doesn’t 1990 feel like a Christian album? It, instead, feels like the stream of consciousness of an artist who also happens to be religious. In this album, we are watching Johnston attempting to navigate his soul and faith is a part of what his soul is constituted of. 

This album is, at its core, an exploration of the soul, not an exploration of religion. Songs like ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’ are what prove this to me. Co-written by Jad Fair, the melancholic piano (an instrument Johnston shows particular skill in) is able to weave itself into the agonisingly simple and profound lyricism demonstrating Johnston’s longing for his only love, Laura, whom he first fell in love with as a teenager and continued loving until the end. Lines such as ‘time comes and goes, but all the while I still think of you’ are seemingly simple, but when coupled with the truth of his inability to get over Laura, demonstrate just how powerfully Johnston could feel. ‘Got to Get You into My Life’ is Johnston’s unconventional cover of the famed Beatles’ song, where the once melodic and jovial pop anthem is dismembered and reassembled into a warped call for a lost lover. We see here, again, the influence Laura had on Johnston and his music, bringing him to disorderly sing pleas in his ongoing campaign for her love. Songs like these remind us that Daniel was not just a genius but a human, a human who felt yearning, loss and sadness like the rest of us. Laura was the unattainable aim for Johnston, an aim that many critics have said he needed to have in order to be constantly chasing a divine resolution, and in doing so, create brilliant music.

 In spite of all the darkness that characterises this album, ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ emerges from it like a beacon of light standing in the centre. No one can listen to 1990 and come out of it unaware of the pain Daniel felt throughout his life, but ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ is his declaration of unwavering hope, a hope any listener cannot help but subscribe to. It is for this reason that I find myself naturally drawn to this song as well as ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’, and ‘Spirit World Rising’ which prevail both sonically and lyrically. 

Despite my natural inclination towards the more hopeful songs that suffuse the album, there is something magnetic about the eerie ‘Devil Town’ which opens it. Johnston’s genius undoubtedly lies in his lyricism, and the simplicity and sincerity of the poetry that is the a cappella ‘Devil Town’ proves this to me. The line ‘turns out I was a vampire myself in the devil town’ is emblematic of Daniel’s struggle in the world. Not only does he register that he is surrounded by evil, he notes that no human is exempt from it. It is, of course, true that Johnston was a lyrical master, but the notion that Johnston didn’t know his way around an instrument is an absurd one. In fact, the first time he performed live he used a guitar, an instrument he had never previously touched, a fact that lives to tell us that the connection Johnston shared with music was more than innate, it was soul-binding. Daniel consolidates a minor part of his life-long crusade for inner peace in the form of 1990, a peace which is epitomised on the cover where he is pictured sitting next to his aptly named painting, ‘Hope’. Hope is a concept that permeates 1990 and makes it not only a triumph in the way of self-expression, but an example of musicality at its finest.