Whether it's Weird Al or Lonely Island, even the best comedy-rock presents a challenge: Does it stand up to repeated listens? Enter one-man-band Bo Burnham.
From guitar techs to road managers to crew chiefs, a year without work devastated live music’s behind-the-scenes workers, and many may never recover.
Comedy rock, or whatever we might call it, faces a built-in durability challenge, which is providing a reason to keep listening after you’ve heard the punch line. Jokes are built to exploit the fact that you don’t know where they’re going; great pop songs are supposed to be experienced again and again.
Hooks, too: Burnham’s composition and production skills — evidently he functions as a one-man band — have expanded and improved along with his writing. Where his early songs felt thin both texturally and harmonically, here he gets real emotion out of the pulsating synths in “FaceTime With My Mom ” and the throbbing beat in “Sexting,” which is about 85% toward being asong.
Listening to “Inside ,” you can wonder what it might sound like to hear a “real” singer do “That Funny Feeling” or “White Woman’s Instagram” or “,” a bleary and haunting trap-soul ballad about Burnham’s struggles with anxiety. Perhaps they’d sound more muscular; for sure they’d get closer to the radio. But then you realize that what gives these songs their weight is the presence of the guy dying to make us laugh.
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