Jack Skellington turned legendary composer Danny Elfman into a weirdo rock star

polygon.com:

The last person in the world who thought Danny Elfman would play Coachella was Danny Elfman.

But in 2022, the legendary composer behind projects like Batman, Spider-Man, The Simpsons, and countless Tim Burton films took the desert stage, shirtless and ready to rip. Those who witnessed the spectacle of Elfman’s performance were blown away — “Nobody else even came close to bringing that level of chaotic pageantry,” wrote Vulture at the time — while images of the roaring composer were quick to go viral on social media.

Most movie buffs knew Elfman as Burton’s bespectacled, goth-adjacent music pal.

Then, in 2022, most movie buffs did a double take. Wow, yes, that’s frickin’ Danny Elfman.

Elfman’s rock turn may not have surprised those who were clicked into the alternative scene of the late 1970s and ’80s; before he established his macabre staccato identity in Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands, Elfman was a member of new wave band Oingo Boingo, which hit its hardest with the 1985 single “Weird Science” (featured in the film of the same name). Founded by Danny’s brother Richard, the band steadily toured and cut records through the early ’90s. (In fact, members of the band still tour to this day.) When Elfman left the band to pivot to composing, he also left behind his live music career — for so long that many of his younger superhero-movie-watching/Hot Topic-shopping devotees never knew his lineage. And even in the Oingo Boingo days, the musician wasn’t going as hard as he did at Coachella.

So what brought him back? What rebirthed him as a man who could share a stage with Billie Eilish and Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland? To my mind, it’s Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Produced