‘Cars’ Co-Creator Jorgen Klubien Debuts His First English Album

Animation veteran Jorgen Klubien has had an amazing run in the animation industry, working on some of the biggest animated features of the last thirty years including An American Tail, The Little Mermaid, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Lion King, Monsters Inc., Toy Story 2 and How to Train Your Dragon. He was also set to be the director of the never-made Laika film Jack and Ben.

In the mid-1990s, Klubien pitched The Yellow Car at Pixar, an idea that eventually morphed into Pixar’s behemoth franchise Cars. That project led to an acrimonious split with Pixar over controversy of how much he contributed to the finished film. Last year, he said in an interview that, “I feel John Lasseter has written me out of the story of how the film got made, taking all the credit himself.” (Klubien receives an “original story” and screenplay credit on the movie.)

But Klubien’s impressive career in animation isn’t really the point of this post. Throughout his American animation career, Klubien has been hiding a secret: he’s a recognized pop singer in his home country of Denmark. He’s been recording with Danish groups since the Eighties, but earlier this year, he finally made his musical abilities known to American audiences by releasing his first English-language album Soul Cowboy.

Two of the videos from the album are below. (The first one contains a few NSFW moments.) He’s got polish and presence as a performer and his music is fun to listen to:

Klubien continues to perform in his own country too. Here are some clips from a few weeks ago when he appeared on the Danish reality TV series Toppen af Poppen:

Follow Jorgen on Facebook and learn more about his work at JorgenKlubien.com. If you read Danish, this article looks pretty informative.