Wolfie's Just Fine (Musician/Comedian Jon Lajoie) Shares New Single 'Hulk Hogan Slammed Andre The Giant'

Wolfie's Just Fine, the moniker of LA-based Montreal-native artist and sometimes-comedian Jon Lajoie, released today his brand new single titled "Hulk Hogan Slammed Andre The Giant."

The latest song to be unveiled off his forthcoming album Everyone Is Dead Except Us (out June 16th on Normal Guy Records), "Hulk Hogan Slammed Andre The Giant" recalls a simple moment of euphoria as a child while watching the iconic match between the two titans during 1987's Wrestlemania III.

"This song is an ode to a window of time in my childhood when the world felt simple, and unfettered and unfiltered joy was still easily accessible," said Lajoie. "A time when Hulk Hogan defeating Andre the Giant meant that everything was going to be okay for ever and ever. When playing with my WWF wrestling figurines in my backyard with my older brother was more thrilling and exciting than any roller coaster ride or $200 million dollar blockbuster film.

As an adult, I rarely have access to that kind of emotional exhilaration because, you know, life. However, that pure, blissful, unadulterated, child-like joy is so powerful, that even the memory of it can cause a small portion to travel through time to the present and put a silly smile on my much-too-serious forty-two year-old face."

His first new studio release in over five years, Lajoie leans into the sweet spot of Wolfie's Just Fine with songs that evoke nostalgic remembrances of pop culture relics and coming of age touchstones alongside piercing insights about what it means to be alive. Recorded in Nashville with producer Jordan Lehning (Caitlin Rose, Andrew Combs), Everyone Is Dead Except Us turns the glorious, undeniable, and devastating territory of human existence and the pain of loss and grief, into something to examine and unpack in the span of four-minute-long deeply felt, emotional songs.

It's an album in the key of mortality, one that tends more towards wry observations than melodrama. Across its ten tracks, Lajoie treats the brief nature of life as a stone to be turned over and examined in the palm of his hand, paying careful attention to the cracks and jagged edges of it.

The album's lead single and title track "Everyone Is Dead Except Us" is out now as well, along with a poignant video written and directed by Lajoie. Inspired by Taoism, he turns the seemingly dark phrase into a statement of gratitude: "Everyone is dead, the only people who aren't dead are those of us who are currently alive. And eventually (and inevitably) we will join them, and then, others after us will be the ones who are alive, and so on. This thought somehow feels very comforting to me, and forces me to recognize how insanely lucky I am to be one of the alive people on earth in this moment."

Lajoie is never maudlin, even when he's being "terribly unfunny." There's an undercurrent of levity that touches so much of humanity within his songs. The things that mean so much to us, the things that helped us understand who we are or what we're good at, the things that once brought us a feeling of indescribable joy, aren't always "important" things.

They're pop culture relics of our past, video games, action movies, and historic events on TV which makes them admittedly a little funny in hindsight. But Lajoie treats the seemingly unserious with the utmost respect and dignity, never allowing a song to sound like an outright joke-each songs' arrangements call to mind tunes from the likes of Aimee Mann or Nick Cave-all while acknowledging that our memories are fallible and subject to embellishment.

It's not funny, except that it is. It's serious, except that it isn't. It's tearful, but it's also the laughter that comes after the heaving sobs. It's joyful-an embracement of the rush of impossibly strong feelings we were once able to tap into so easily. And it's heartbreaking-an elegy to a time of purity of spirit we'll never possess again.

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