For more than three decades, Doctor Noize has built a musical world where imagination, education, storytelling and experimentation exist side by side. A chart-topping children’s recording artist, songwriter, producer, educator and lifelong creative explorer, Doctor Noize fuses genres, lessons and fun for a one-of-a-kind listening experience. From elaborate concept albums and orchestral performances to one-man-band shows, educational projects and his ever-evolving cast of characters, his work is united by an infectious curiosity and a belief that music can entertain, challenge and connect us all at once.

That spirit is at the heart of Positive Energy! (The Music of Doctor Noize), a 28-track retrospective that traces the remarkable breadth of his musical catalog. The album offers a journey through the stories, characters and ideas that have shaped Doctor Noize’s work, touching on everything from leadership and teamwork to creativity, sustainability, diversity, musical history and the power of starting over. The collection also includes “The Monster Dance,” which has recently been licensed to anchor a new show at Universal Kids Theme Park & Resort.

Yet behind the colorful characters and playful musical adventures is an artist whose relationship with music was forged through profound personal loss. After losing both his brother and father within the same year during his childhood, Doctor Noize describes music as having “saved his soul.” Writing became a way to process grief, make sense of an experience he could not easily share with others, and ultimately begin rebuilding his life. That philosophy, of embracing life, taking risks, remaining curious and choosing to rebuild, has continued to inform both his music and his approach to creativity.

Now, as Doctor Noize reaches an inflection point in his career, Positive Energy! serves not only as a celebration of what he has created, but also as something of a bridge toward what comes next. While he plans to continue creating and performing for younger audiences, he is increasingly turning his attention toward his work as Cory Cullinan, exploring more adult-oriented music, writing, experimental projects and new creative territory. We caught up with Doctor Noize to discuss the making of Positive Energy!, the evolution of Phineas McBoof, the role of storytelling in education, his philosophy of creative risk-taking, and what comes next in a career that has never stopped evolving.

What inspired you to create Positive Energy! as a retrospective of your musical journey?

I’ve planned to do it for a while, but haven’t. Then I realized I’m 179 years old and I better do it. In truth, I may be exaggerating my age a bit. But that’s what happens when people get old — we exaggerate things and get facts and figures wrong. But I wanted to release my children’s album retrospective before I was yelling at kids to get off my lawn instead of performing for them.

Okay fine, I’m not that old — but it’s time because I’ve released a lot of Doctor Noize material I’m deeply proud of, and I am at an inflection point in my career where I’ve decided I’m going to tilt the balance of what I do more toward adults as Cory Cullinan than kids as Doctor Noize. I’ll still be playing shows and releasing (less) music as Doctor Noize. But I’ll be doing even more releasing music as Cory Cullinan for adults, teaching Recording Arts at Stanford in the summers, serving as Chair of the Board or the recording program at Pikes Peak State College, writing a book, releasing a mystery musical pretty soon, and taking more time to learn and listen again. A little less time to talk and create. A little rebirth and regrowth, which you’ll hear below is a constant theme in my life.

I was deeply proud of this final album Positive Energy!, and it was deeply meaningful to me curating it and remembering all the wonderful people who helped me make these creations along the way. And it was a joy making the four new tracks on the album.

Doctor Noize started when my daughters were 1 and 3. I did it for them. Now they’re 21 and 23, and they help me produce it. Even helped me run the business. But they’re moving on to important things of their own now. They’ll help but in moderation. And I’m following their lead. All good things…. My wife, who raised our kids with me (raised me too), is blind. And amazing. And brilliant. We are doing even more things together. I love that. I’m lucky to have her in my life as my kids are now on their own. And I’m lucky to have two kids who are so kind to their parents.

With 28 tracks spanning your catalog, how did you decide which songs belonged on this collection?

Positive Energy! contains two tracks from each kids and family album I’ve produced. It also contains four recently released singles — Juntos, I’m Listening, Diversity, and Some People See, But I Don’t — recorded exclusively for this retrospective with luminaries in the field of children’s music and my life.
The track list is not created as a greatest hits collection, even though it does contain some of my biggest hits — #1 singles, chart hits from three decades, iTunes Essential Recordings, music called Essential Recordings by major publications and given awards by organizations that supposedly know stuff, songs made into stage musicals and shows, songs in multiple hugely popular mobile apps, songs from animated videos with millions of views, songs commissioned for orchestral shows, and songs that are collaborations with major Grammy winning stars in multiple genres.

Instead, it’s carefully curated so audiophiles, kids, parents, thinkers and educators will get a taste of the unique and deep creative adventure they will go on if they listen to all the Doctor Noize albums.

You describe your music as a “creative adventure.” What do you hope listeners experience as they explore your work?

Each album is actually a musical centered on specific story, character and learning goals. I’ve always said in interviews that my primary children’s music influence was… Pixar. So it was important to me to balance the hits with the purpose behind them on this one retrospective album, which unlike other Doctor Noize albums is a collection of songs instead of a musical. This was crucial because, moving forward, this will probably be the Doctor Noize album people hear the most.

Your music blends entertainment with learning. Can you tell us more about the themes ?

So… even just by listening to this album, you’ll be a party to adventurousness, inclusivity, and the courage to start something (album #1); the complexities of leadership, purpose and teamwork (#2); grammar, words and creativity (#3); the orchestra, instruments, musical structure and music history (#4 & #5); punctuation, wordplay and writing (#6); self-sufficiency, composition and genre (#7); environmentalism, sustainability & globalism (#8); mood food, spontaneity and second chances (#9); diversity and curiosity (this collection #10); live performance, handling the highs and the challenges of success (#11); and the recording studio, the inevitability of endings, and the beauty of new beginnings (#12).

Hopefully a Doctor Noize story arc well told, summarized on this retrospective. I’m a lifelong explorer, learner and educator, from youth to college to adulthood, and I make no apology for subversively wrapping heaps of philosophy and education into the fun.

“The Monster Dance” is being used to anchor a new show at Universal Kids Theme Park & Resort. What does that opportunity mean to you?

Well, for starters, it means my wife and I get to go to Universal and see four monsters dancing around in a story and show set to my music! The four monsters in the Doctor Noize books and albums are a misunderstood monster horn section Phineas McBoof invites to join his Band. And now four monsters have joined the Universal cast beside the likes of SpongeBob, Minions, Trolls and Shrek. So that’s really, really cool.

Big Picture: It means a lot to me because these songs have always been part of musical stories with characters that demonstrate resilience, character and fun to kids and the adults who belong to them. To have an entity as wonderful and authoritative as Universal decide something I’ve created will help them tell the story they want to tell as well is deeply, deeply gratifying. I’m grateful for it and I don’t take it for granted.

How did your character Phineas McBoof and the world around him evolve over the years?

My primary protagonist Phineas McBoof’s story is modeled after the Beatles (he’s named after Paul McCartney and his story follows the Beatles’ real-life story arc), but he and his International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses largely reflect a better version of what I have attempted to be as an artist myself.

In the first album, he starts a beautiful band of brilliant misfits. Their early songs sound like early Beatles songs. In the second album, they get so big they can no longer hear themselves over the audience screams — just like the Beatles. Phineas leaves the Band and Doctor Noize takes over. It’s emotionally complex content and unusual for a children’s album.

In the second and third album, the band hunts for Phineas and finds him choosing music over fame as an orchestral conductor of an obscure island orchestra. Being a purist. A lot happens and he decides to rejoin the band, committing to his friends and not just his music, doing both.

The next Phineas storyline album was during the pandemic, and Doctor Noize and all the band members were at home making music. The second half of the album explores musical genre with a bunch of drastically different versions of the Doctor Noize hit Banana, each version headed by one of the Band members and emphasizing their background and personality.

The final two Phineas McBoof storyline albums will end his tale similarly to the end of the Beatles tale.

There is also a series of Doctor Noize Grammaropolis albums — with different characters and about 20 animated videos and an app — and a series of collaboration albums.

All of the above has allowed me to really learn about a vast array of genres and styles and evolve myself, like Phineas. Although Phineas probably does it even more purely than I ever could. That’s what’s fun about having an alter ego like him — I play him (I’m his voice) on the albums.

You lost much of your family in a single year as a child and say music “saved your soul.” How did that experience shape the artist you became?

My brother — already a well-known Silicon Valley computer programmer at 15 — died of cancer, and my father — the Mayor of a legendary Silicon Valley town — died by suicide within a year, distraught about what happened to my brother Tracey. My dad was a legend in the town, everyone loved him. Including me. And then he just descended into despair at the loss of a child. That was a time when nobody said “why don’t we find Cory a therapist?” So music became my therapy. I wrote music and said things I’d never say to other people, particularly other teenage boys, about what I’d learned through that Shakespearian tragedy. I learned life was short; I wanted to live each moment instead of slog through it; I never wanted to take anything for granted because my life was gilded and then it sucked and everything fell apart; and that it’s a choice for your life to stay fallen apart or rebuild. I chose to rebuild. It was, and is, hard. I’m the only surviving member of my family.

A lot of what I do is trying to live up to the promise of my father, my brother, and my best musical friend in my teens Mark Van Horn, who also died young of a brain tumor like my brother. I don’t know why I’m around and they’re not. But I do know that I’m gonna make it count, and I’m gonna do it partly in their honor. They’d be doing it with me. I’m doing it without them. I’ve always felt slightly alone without them. But I’m doing it. And I’ve created an amazing — amazing — family of my own with a brilliant wife and two brilliant daughters.

So I’m a lucky man again.

You’re known for performing as a one-man band and even creating songs with audiences on the spot. What makes live performance so exciting for you?

What you said — the combination of trying to do something musically sophisticated and complicated and still connect with the audience as a communal thing. One of my great goals through my tech training is to be one of the few people (seemingly) who actually use technology to connect people on a deep creative level. So much of our technology — including, perhaps especially, our social media technology — is now clearly designed to do the opposite. To connect us tribally instead of curiously; to connect us on a shallow surface level instead of get us together for a long meal and conversation; to make us resent or dislike each other instead of understand and learn to love each other.

One of my goals with the one-man-band is to try to reclaim the connecting and communical opportunities tech gives us if we really think philosophically about what we want to do about it instead of monetarily about who we want to leverage and profit from with it.

So I have a guitar, keytar, saxophone, electronic hand drum, wireless mics, a keyboard, and Ableton Live, and I play live looping shows. And yes, the shows change based on audience participation. Audience members come up and add things to the song. And as you say, I sometimes create songs with audiences on the spot. It’s real and raw and hilarious and fun. Always one step from brilliance and always one step from a train wreck. And this is related to your last question, about what I learned from the death of my family as a child:

Why not do things? Why not try things? Why not risk failure? What’s the worst that could happen? That you don’t succeed at doing great things? Well, you weren’t going to succeed at doing great things by being too chicken to try ‘em either. So what’s the loss?

The answer is there is no loss in that. I’ve experienced real loss. That ain’t it. Do what you were born to do. Say what you were born to say. Fail. Fail. And succeed.

In many ways, that’s what the whole arc of the Phineas story is about. They’re doers. And they ain’t perfect. They just do. Together. And they love each other.

You’ve worked as a musician, educator, producer, entrepreneur, author and community builder. How do all of those different roles influence your creative work?

I tell my students at Stanford that it is essential for me to teach musicians of all generations so that I learn and am inspired by them. For me, teaching is very much a two-way street. I am grateful to my students, and they appear to be grateful to me. So basically with that last sentence what I’m saying is they’re not very smart. ‘Cause I’m a moron.

(Pause for laugh track. Okay, let’s continue now…)

The kooky curiosity and fun-filled meticulousness of Phineas McBoof & The International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses reflect my own journey from young rock bandleader, to classical music Major, to studying with iconic Stanford electronic music pioneers, to Master of Recording Arts, to college music professor, all while being a recording artist — a career where, like Phineas, I’ve tried to learn, explore and connect as much as I’ve tried to create things. This makes my recordings come from a slightly different place than many artists.

If you do anything to test this claim, please check out the sequence on Positive Energy! of This One Moment, Cast Your Spell, and Phineas McBoof Crashes The Symphony to hear a story, orchestration, and purpose unlike anything else you have probably heard before. Then realize I’m crazy and, ya know, go back to your day.

What have your experiences as a teacher and professor taught you about how children, and adults, learn through music?

I’ll tell you one key teaching experience I learned years ago when I was a high school music teacher and Arts Department Head in Silicon Valley in my 20s. I taught a classical music history course. I quickly learned that if you talked about the amazing musical motifs in Beethoven’s 9th symphony, kids would try but struggle to want to learn it all. But if you told the incredible story of Beethoven being deaf when he wrote what many consider the greatest symphony of all time, what he went through to create it, how he experienced it on opening night as the only person there who couldn’t really hear it except in his head and vibrations he felt… and then you say: “But you wouldn’t wanna hear that piece, would you?”

They all roar YES. And my classical music history elective class — in a HIGH SCHOOL — became so popular the school made it a required freshman course. The moral of that story? It’s obvious.

We all love and relate to stories and characters best. So if you want to teach anyone anything, you have to have a relatable story and character. And that has influenced everything I’ve done, from the musicals with colorful characters representing my values I make as Doctor Noize, to the shows I create, which has me as a central character but invites the audience to be a character in my show and make the event their story as well.

After three decades of charting music and an incredibly diverse career, what positive energy are you hoping to create next?

The honest answer is that I’m heading to making several adult recordings that don’t only express positive energy. They express the real emotions and thoughts a lot of us are feeling in these times, some of which are positive and hopeful, and some of which are frustrated and concerned. I don’t think only positive energy is helpful and cathartic. It’s important to acknowledge our other thoughts and feelings too. In fact, that’s all over the Doctor Noize stories and recordings. It’s obviously all over my life experience.

In the next five years… I’m releasing a Cory Cullinan album called Scenes From Fatherhood that has some really emotional and raw things — some beautiful and some not so much. Like life. People will relate. I’m releasing a joyous big band album called The Bad News. So excited for that. I’m releasing a Mystery Musical in segments that will, um, make some waves… pun intended. Circle back for that. I’m releasing a book called Scenes From Fatherhood: Photo Albums & Skeleton Closets, and an album called Photo Albums & Skeleton Closets. And each year since 2024 I’ve been composing and releasing an avant Garde piece — music and video so far — that will be brought together as an album called Seven Years Of Sensation to encapsulate in fine art form what I’ve been feeling, thinking and experiencing in these very impactful times. I’m doing one other surprise album in that time too.

Then I’m gonna release a Cory Cullinan retrospective with a few songs off each of those albums. It will rocket up the Nobody Gives A Shit charts. And I love that.

What’s next for you?

Our youngest daughter Riley Max’s second album comes out October 2nd! I’m a co-producer of the album, but it’s her show. She’s released two singles and videos from it — Year 1 and Pockets — that have earned a lot of acclaim. I’m so proud of her. She’s an improvement on my artistry. I love it. She’s a senior at Harvard with a Joint Concentration in Music and visual arts. My oldest daughter is the director of all my videos and has helped me get my business together — she’s an MBA at Yale and now working for a few years in New York before finishing her second year. They’re brilliant women like their mother. I chose their mother well. Smartest thing I ever did.

And I get to go to Universal in October to see the show debut at their theme park with The Monster Dance. I get to go to Steamboat Springs in November to work with people at Strings Music Festival as part of Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project.

But mostly I get to go on walks with my wife after a long and overbooked summer. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you! I appreciate you and your audience making time for me.

Connect with Doctor Noize: INSTAGRAM