Jack Stauber [pronounced staw-bur] is an American independent musical artist from McKean, a small rural town near Erie, Pennsylvania. He was born on April 6th, 1996, and is currently 27 years old.
Jack Stauber's current music style is quite unique, with his music notably varying on different genres and styles. He mainly makes synth pop-styled music, but often mixes elements of other genres like folk, jazz, lo-fi, and rock into his music. Jack is also known for his impressively flexible singing voice, being able to hit deep lows and high falsettos. According to an interview, he developed and evolves these skills by singing in the shower. He also uses this vocal range to voice nearly all of the characters featured in his animations. Jack is also notable for his lyrics, which are often bizarre and infamously hard to make out, resulting in numerous misheard lyrics. This has caused various listeners to believe that his lyrics are random and just for fun. However, he has stated in the aforementioned interview that just about every song he writes has a meaning, with him claiming that he wouldn't sing them if it didn't make sense.
He has been uploading on his YouTube channel since April 1st, 2013, as well as other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and especially Patreon, being the platform he's still currently active on. Jack Stauber seems to be on a hiatus with uploading traditional content to the public. However, he still posts traditional and high quality content onto Patreon, proving he is still actively making art. He also releases his music through his own independent record label, Plopscotch Records.
Animation and Art
Along with music, Jack is also known for his art and animation. He also publishes his more detailed illustrations and artwork online, most notably on his secondary Instagram page, plopscotch, named after his independent record label. Jack is known for his wide range of animation mediums, including 2D digital Microsoft-Paint animation, Claymation, 3D CGI animation done in Blender, and various forms of hand-drawn animations. He also rarely and occasionally makes live-action works.
Art Styles
Jack Stauber has developed very unique artstyles, which is noticeable both in his sculptures, animations, and illustrations. One notable style is in his more surreal drawings where he draws characters with distorted facial and body features, such as bouncy and emphasized facial features and body parts either being in the wrong places or being built in usual ways. In his Microsoft-Paint drawings and animations, Jack often uses a trailing effect to create patterns in the background, emphasize text, and distort characters' faces. This effect is achieved by holding the Shift key and dragging a selected item across the screen. This text style has since become a trademark style of Jack's content. Another text style synonymous with Jack is putting text (usually white) over a colored screen and using a chroma effect to make the text appear as if it's floating. Another unique feature of Jack's art is a frequent style of drawing or sculpting characters where the nose (and sometimes the ears) of a character are flushed while the rest of the skin is pale.
Jack has also done a few animations for Adult Swim. His first short for Adult Swim would be Wishing Apple in July 2018. His next short would be a preexisting video called Valentine's Day is Not for the Lonely, which would be featured on an episode of Off the Air. Then in March 2019, Jack made a full mini-series for Adult Swim called SHOP: A Pop Opera, a six-episode series about a man who goes shopping and learns many lessons about life based around the foods and people he runs into along the way. Finally, on Halloween 2020, Jack made and released a short film called OPAL, which centers around a young girl investigating a mysterious house from across her street.
Teeth
A popular trope amongst fans of Jack's work is his frequent references to teeth in his songs, animations, and his usage of realistic teeth on his clay characters. He has never directly stated why he mentions teeth so often. Some believe it is a metaphor, while others believe it is merely a choice of style. On January 28th, 2019, Jack uploaded a video asking people to send their teeth to him while thanking people who had sent him teeth after he tweeted a request for them on December 4th, 2018. When a user replied to the request asking if he wanted human teeth or resin teeth, Jack replied that there were no limitations. Many fans are curious how many teeth he has gotten out of this drive, and why he wanted so many.
Discography
Albums
Jack has currently published four album throughout his career on his main artist name. These albums can be found on many platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Pandora, etc. These albums are:
- Finite Form (March 18th, 2013)
- Viator (September 18th, 2015)
- Pop Food (March 25th, 2017)
- HiLo (April 14th, 2018)
Finite Form was Jack Stauber's first ever officially released album under his main studio artist name, released on March 18th, 2013. The album is very notable for being made when Jack was only sixteen years old and notably during a time when Jack was more experimental with his music style, sounding very different from Jack's current music-style, despite its similar genre. Fans also point out how high quality and well produced the album was and sounds for Jack's time and age, with the album since gaining a cult following with Jack's rise in popularity.
Viator was the second album by Jack Stauber, released on September 18th, 2015. This album features a collection of songs that Jack had written through May-July 2015. It is notably a big change in music style for Jack, as instead of the pop style that Jack was known for, its main focus would shift into a folk and indie rock style. Viator is known for being made while Jack was said to be going through loss at the time, as said in an interview, which resulted in the album famously having various and abrupt mood swings, with some songs being upbeat, somber, and sometimes unsettling. Jack also claims that the way to get the best experience and results with the album is to listen to it in a supine position with your eyes closed. Shortly after the album's release, a few months later Jack would eventually return to his pop music style in late 2016, with it starting evolve into his traditional style.
Pop Food was the third album by Jack Stauber, released on March 25th, 2017, and it is the album that has arguably become his most well known and recognized out of the main three studio albums. It would notably see the return from the folk music style to his original pop style, notably featuring new styles and feelings of retro, lo-fi, and nostalgia of the late 20th century, making it stick out from his rest of his discography at the time. The first two tracks on the album, Buttercup and Oh Klahoma would also notably go on to become two of his most well known songs, as well as the other songs on the album each gaining followings of their own.
HiLo is the fourth and latest album by Jack Stauber, released on April 14th, 2018. Just like Pop Food, the album has also become very popular and well recognized within the community. Also similar to Pop Food, the music style of the album is also reminiscent of late 20th century nostalgia with a retro and pop style, though it notably has the most genre variety out of the four albums, featuring songs with genres such as rock, pop, jazz, and experimental music. It's also notably the only studio album cover that isn't a traditional drawing made by him. Two tracks from the album Dead Weight and Gettin' My Mom On would famously become the most popular tracks from the album and some of his most popular tracks overall.
Micropops and Extended Songs
Jack also publishes music under the secondary artist name Jack Stauber's Micropop, in which he releases his short songs from his social media and animations, extended versions of his short shorts, or other unreleased and affiliated content. Essentially, it is content that Jack would not want to release on his official studio name. So far, there have been a total of nine releases under the Micropop name, with six extended song EPs, one album/compilation of his short songs, and two soundtrack albums.
Extended Song EPs
- Inchman / Two Time (June 4th, 2018)
- Cheeseburger Family / Fighter (August 6th, 2018)
- The Ballad of Hamantha / Today Today / Al Dente (November 5th, 2018)
- Baby Hotline / Tea Errors (March 21st, 2019)
- Deploy / Those Eggs Aren't Dippy / Out the Ox (November 4th, 2019)
- Dinner is Not Over / There's Something Happening / Keyman / Cupid (February 7th, 2020)
Albums
- Micropop (June 29th, 2019)
Soundtracks
- SHOP: A Pop Opera (March 8th, 2020)
- Jack Stauber's OPAL (Original Soundtrack) (November 6th, 2020)
Former Bands
Jack has publicly been part of two independent bands in the past and had released music with the bands and had performed at many shows with them before eventually departing from both of them in 2018. Both bands would release only one studio album with Jack before his departure, ironically both being self-titled albums. These two bands are:
Childhood and Influences
Jack Stauber was born on April 6th, 1996, and he grew up in his home state, Pennsylvania. All revealed in an interview with NewRetroWave in 2018, Jack grew up with a lot of vintage items from the 80s and 90s which would be big influences on his life, music, and art style. A lot of the music that Jack listened to growing up were also a big inspiration behind his music. Jack said that he listened to a lot of "campy alt" music from the 80s from his mother, and a lot of "good ol' dead and jazz funk" from his father. Jack also said that in high school, he used to listen to a lot of art rock and experimental pop, with Jack stating that The Residents and M83's Digital Shades had blown his mind when first listening to it and how they've led him to the music that he's still into today, which can be seen when listening to albums like Pop Food and HiLo.
A lot of movies and television shows that Jack watched while growing up were also big inspirations in his art styles. One big example is the American cartoon Rugrats, which Jack claims was his favorite cartoon growing up, and he used to really love animation studio Klasky Csupo's art style in the show, especially in the pilot episode. Remnants of the Klasky Csupo art style can be seen in his current cartoons such as five and hot dogs for example. Some clips and snippets from Rugrats can also be heard in a select few songs. When it comes to Jack's surreal and creepy art style, a really notable influence on this style was Pink Floyd's The Wall, which according to Jack is one of his favorite movies. Some other cartoon influences of his style were Fleischer's cartoons, Merrie Melodies, and Pink Panther, as according to Jack, when he watched these when he was little for the first time, he was instantly "hooked for life". Jack also had a big influence from Bruce Bickford, a stop and Claymation animator, with Bruce being the best known influence to Jack and his currently known claymation style
Current and Possible Status
Since mid-2020, Jack Stauber has begun posting less to the public and has begun posting primarily and exclusively onto Patreon. Despite his absence to the public, his activity on Patreon confirms that Jack is still working and creating art. There currently aren't any public updates on Jack's current status and plans, as well as reasonings for Jack's sudden Patreon migrate, and it has been a mystery to many fans over the years. These Patreon posts have been notable for being very unusual and bizarre in nature, most notably with gibberish and nonsensical titles. However, despite they're strange nature, they have been noted for being high in quality similar to public content. They've also been noted for their consistent uploads, with them being uploaded at the end of each month, and each featuring two posts, with one video and one audio.
There have been various speculations towards why Jack has been doing this. One notable theory claims that Jack is currently working on a big and difficult project that is taking a while to create. Fans believe that Jack is drifting away from constantly making content to focus on this project or the hype up fans, with the Patreon content being filler content meant to keep his patrons in touch with him while making the project. Another theory claims that these posts are some sort of puzzle or code towards something. It's been pointed out by fans that the Patreon titles, tags, and descriptions, despite seeming nonsensical, seem to be written very specifically or deliberately originating from somewhere else. Various different collages and arts are featured in the description, which feature various different symbols, numbers, and phrases.
Quotes
- "If you see someone being happy, leave 'em alone, let them figure it out for themselves." - from the note on my phone from Nov 14 from last year Tumblr audio.
- "I get playful with the words but they’re always chosen very carefully. They all make perfect sense. I wouldn’t sing something if it didn’t." - An interview with New Retro Wave in July 2018.
- "We did it together because we tried together, and now we can do the show!" - Live show at Rhythm and Brews Festival on August 4th, 2018.