The myth of Daniel Johnston's genius

He may not chase fame, but cult songwriter Daniel Johnston is currently receiving more attention than ever. With a movie of his life in production, a biography imminent from Everett True, high-profile UK dates pencilled in, and new reissues of his classic 80s albums Hi, How Are You, Yip/Jump Music and Continued Story (as well as the Welcome to My World retrospective compilation), Johnston is very much in the spotlight. In the music press, a bad word about him is seldom heard. But you can't help feel that a lot of people just get him wrong.

For years, magazines have waxed lyrical about the "pure and childlike soul" of Daniel Johnston. The 2006 documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, explicitly emphasised that Johnston was lo-fi's very own Brian Wilson. This kind of canonising helps no one, least of all Johnston himself.

It's often assumed that Johnston's music comes directly as a result of his well-documented psychological problems (an extreme, delusion-feeding form of bipolar disorder). This isn't true. Yes, his bipolar disorder – now under control – has impacted on his music, but not in the way most people assume. Johnston lacks the filters used by other songwriters to screen lines that may be inappropriate, resulting in an obsessive repetition of his core themes: the redemptive power of love, unrequited love, a girl called Laurie. But due to the medication he needed to control his mania, Johnston was never even able to write or play music while imbalanced. His records don't sound scrawled and scratchy because he's mentally ill; they sound like that because they were often just recorded in a basement, on a boombox, with a broken chord organ and Speak & Spell for accompaniment.

The idea that Johnston has found the true and forlorn voice of love through his neglect of recording technique and musical theory is rubbish, too. He was always an excellent pianist, though this skill wouldn't be fully exhibited until beautiful ballad-led albums like 1990. Previously, Johnston attempted to ingratiate himself with Austin's lo-fi scene by affecting a comically bad aptitude for the guitar (an instrument he'd never learned). Even so, his boombox albums are classics of DIY experimentation, a forerunner of Jeffrey Lewis or even Pavement.

These days, it's almost taboo to say anything critical about Johnston. This is incredibly patronising. For one thing, it makes any honest evaluation of his work impossible. He might wring out much beauty from his cartoon-like songs, but he is also capable of lewdness (bizarre, crude references to masturbation and orgasms are frequent) and incredible self-pity.

Johnston's former manager once issued a press release, begging journalists not to use the word "genius" to describe him, least it detonate the singer's own troubled ego. "I wonder if people go see him hoping to witness a nervous breakdown," Johnston's friend Gretchen Phillips told music historian Irwin Chusid. "Do they perceive him as their equal, or as someone they need to coax along and feel safe? As much as the audience may genuinely love his songs, I sense a lot of condescension. That's always bugged me."

In fact, it is Johnston himself who best articulates the condescending praise fed to him, like peanuts, in his own song, Like a Monkey in a Zoo: "Throw me a peanut / Laugh and make jokes / But I've had enough peanuts and I'm ready to croak... You say I'm cute / You don't know how much that hurts."