Trivia / Matthew Good

• Artist Disillusionment: A rare case not aimed at fans so much as the media and cult of celebrity. Good struggled with his sudden celebrity status, to the point of intentionally sabotaging interviews in order to avoid the media.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Jenni's Song" was very popular in the United States during the band's Beautiful Midnight tour, but Good swore he'd never play it again due to audiences failing to understand the irony.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Matt has specifically said that he has no idea how "Avalanche" (the song, not the album) was ever created, and considers it his best work.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The version of Beautiful Midnight released outside of Canada replaced three of the songs with a few songs (and hits) from the previous album, Underdogs. The concept behind the album (each song representing an hour, from 5pm to 6am) is lost on this pressing, especially since the song for midnight itself, "Let's Get It On", is absent from this pressing. As this album was his band's breakthrough into the US audience, Good purposefully sabotaged all of his American press outings by being uncooperative or aloof.
  • Before the release of The Audio of Being, Good was told the record needed a radio-friendly hit. "Anti-Pop" was described by Good as his attempt at writing the worst song possible in order to fulfill this request. While it's arguably out of place on the record, this may be a case of executive-enforced creativity.
  • Matt has gone on record, saying he's never been given as big a budget as he was for Avalanche ever again, due to it not selling as amazingly as the execs had hoped.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Good's work with The Rodchester Kings remains a case of this. The limited-edition Loser Anthems EP and Lo-Fi B-Sides fit this trope until Good included them on the second, "bonus" CD of In a Coma: 1995-2005 so that the songs would be easily accessible for all fans. For American fans, the "missing" tracks from Beautiful Midnight, and the entirety of Underdogs and Last of the Ghetto Astronauts were this until the advent of Amazon Canada, iTunes, and/or the rise of file-sharing.
• No Export for You: Last of the Ghetto Astronauts and Underdogs were never released in the United States, and there are significant differences between the Canadian and US editions of Beautiful Midnight. Somewhat justified in that Beautiful Midnight was when the band (and their label) first began to make a push into the American market, but very irritating for fans who found themselves having to order the original CD from Canada.
• Writer Revolt: Since Hospital Music, Good has mostly disavowed "commercial" hit songs, and when they show up, they usually include a subtle (or not) shot towards politics or against popular opinion.

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