Monk Turner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monk Turner is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. Known as the “galactic defender of the concept album”,[1] Turner has created a number of multi-genre concept albums. He is known for winning the Free Music Archive's competition to create a copyright-free replacement for the song "Happy Birthday to You" whose rights were once owned by Time Warner.
He often collaborates with other musicians: Kaleidoscope (2012) incorporated more than 40 artists internationally,[2] and his narrative album Emergency Songs (2011)[3] is a co-creation with singer and lyricist Alanna Lin (a.k.a. Fascinoma). It imagines post-earthquake scenarios in Los Angeles, self-styled as “public safety through music and storytelling”.[4] The track “Judicious Jason” from Instrumental Friends (Part 3) was the chosen soundtrack at the 2015 Blue Ribbon Children’s Festival, when 2,231 students made a Guinness World Record with history’s largest choreographed ribbon dance.[5][6]
Over the years Turner has released all of his albums via Creative Commons licenses “as a means to escape the constraints of traditional music composition / distribution”.[7] He is a former Featured Commoner and has spoken alongside artists such as Curt Smith about the benefits of CC licenses for musicians and other content makers.[8]
In 2020, Turner released the concept album Divided States, a collection of songs addressing political and social division.[9] He followed this with the four-part EP series Emotional Baggage (2021), a project exploring sixteen human emotions across multiple releases.[10]
Turner has continued to release concept-driven albums spanning a variety of themes, including mythology, color, and personal relationships, maintaining a prolific output of multi-genre conceptual works.[11] In 2025 he released the collaborative holiday-themed album Holiday Party!.[12]
