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Bo Burnham is an American comedian and musician. He started posting comedic songs on his YouTube channel in 2006 when he was just 15 years old. Since then, he’s pursued a style of stand-up comedy that incorporates his musical talents in unique ways and takes on contemporary issues with razor-sharp satire. He currently has two comedy specials on Netflix, what. (2013) and Make Happy (2016). Alas, Burnham stated after the release of Make Happy that he would leave comedy behind for the foreseeable future in order to pursue writing. (( Zinoman, Jason. “Bo Burnham, Discovered on the Internet, Now Challenges It.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 3 June 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/arts/television/bo-burnham-discovered-on-the-internet-now-challenges-it.html?_r=0&auth=login-google. ))
Four years later, he’s kept that promise. He wrote and directed the film Eighth Grade, released in 2018. Meanwhile, there’s been no new music from him and no rumblings of a return to the stage, which is disappointing for fans of his scathing social commentary. In an era with so much discourse centering on the intersection between privilege and media, Burnham’s wit could be more instructive than ever. Though his older material sometimes shows its age, it also has moments that ring just as true today as they did when they were written.
Who’s Bo, Yo?
Though every musical track and onstage quip Burnham releases is recognizably “Bo,” his talents span a wide range of modes and styles. In terms of music, Bo plays several different instruments and often makes use of prerecorded music, but he’s probably most recognizable sitting at a keyboard, whether onstage or in his bedroom.
Credit: Bo Burnham
Many of his songs are drawn from rock or musical theater to create a neutral canvas for comedic lyrics. Sometimes he takes inspiration from mainstream pop to criticize the corporatization of the genre, such as in his aptly-named “Repeat Stuff.” Other times, he aims his satire at mournful piano ballads, such as in “Sad,” or stadium country music, such as in “Pandering.” But more often than anything else, Bo draws from hip-hop to deliver inventive wordplay and observational humor at a lightning-fast pace. In terms of rhymes per minute, he can hang with the best quick-tonged rappers out there:
Photosynthetical, I want ’em botanical
(( Bo Burnham. “Hell of a Ride.” what., Comedy Central Records, 2013. Spotify, open.spotify.com/track/272gn0hwxo7UCwlgvNa4as?si=R9CWcmitQ8uhFxgEwwQqzg ))
And I’m kind of theoretical
Quantum mechanical
Alphabetical, a word puritanical
Not a hypothetical
I rule—tyrannical
After he transitioned to stand-up, Bo’s stock and trade became long performances, half traditional joke telling and half live musical set. As Bo’s career continued, he played more and more with this dichotomy. Sometimes he uses a small “song” as an extended punchline to a spoken joke, or plays off his audience’s expectation of a song to deliver a quip instead.
He also incorporates pantomime, such as in an extended sequence, where he demonstrates the difference between making a PB&J sandwich when high and when drunk. Then, to give the audience a break from the madness, he sometimes reads “poetry,” which he builds up as profound and subdued only for it to turn out just as riotous as everything else in the show.
In terms of the lyrics and on-stage jokes themselves, Bo curses often and makes a lot of ribald quips that are sometimes more shocking than clever, so discretion is advised when reviewing his back catalog. His irreverence, however, is exactly what makes him hilarious in so many moments, especially when he gets self-deprecating. Bo’s tip to feel unique in the face of existential insignificance? “I’ll say a group of words that I think no one has ever said in that order… something random, like… ‘I’m your father and I love your comedy show.’” (( what. Performance by Bo Burnham, Comedy Central, 2013. ))
What’re You Trying To Say, Though, Bo?
In between the music and lighthearted jokes, Bo always makes time for some satire about heavy topics. In a self-aware moment towards the end of Make Happy, Burnham comments that the show is “about performance,” which can really be applied to his entire oeuvre. (( Make Happy. Performance by Bo Burnham, Netflix, 2016. )) As a viral YouTube star, Bo knows a thing or two about the topic, and he shows it perhaps most scathingly in the song “art is dead.”
Entertainers like to seem complicated
(( Bo Burnham. “ART IS DEAD.” Words Words Words., Comedy Central Records, 2010. Spotify, open.spotify.com/track/5KqdkuWE9AkTtoAiPpdD0E?si=REgGpouUR8OWwQbf5U5Dhw ))
But we’re not complicated
I can explain it pretty easily
have you ever been to a birthday party for children
and one of the children won’t stop screaming
cause he’s just a little attention attractor
when he grows up to be a comic or actor
he’ll be rewarded for never maturing
for never understanding or learning
that every day can’t be about him
there’s other people, you selfish asshole.
The track debuted in 2010, long before the term “influencer” had pervaded the public consciousness. Yet Burnham’s argument about the egotism of celebrity still rings true, despite the many changes the media landscape has undergone in the interim. More recently in Make Happy, Burnham hit a little closer to the situation in 2020:
“And I was just taught, you know, express myself and have things to say and everyone will care about them… Social media— it’s just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform. So the market said, ‘Here, perform everything to each other all the time for no reason.’ It’s prison, it’s horrific. It is performer and audience melded together… I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.”
(( Make Happy. Performance by Bo Burnham, Netflix, 2016. ))
It’s hard to find a more succinct description of what the media landscape was in 2016 and what it continues to be today, and Bo makes a compelling argument that democratized performance can have serious toxic effects.
He also occasionally comments about the relationship between performance and privilege, such as in the mock ballad “Sad.” After expressing his sorrow about a litany of comedically exaggerated tragedies, Bo sarcastically observes that, as a straight, white man, he doesn’t need to actually deal with the “Pain, war, genocide, racism, sexism,” plaguing the larger world. (( Bo Burnham. “Sad.” what., Comedy Central Records, 2013. Spotify, open.spotify.com/track/07xM26pWCDsUWV2ialwgNf?si=pIwUc4_7TwiqKVotwTKHww )) Instead, he can simply perform jokes about it as a cure for his second-hand sadness. In an era when rich and famous people so often reveal their insensitivity to various issues, this song from years ago points out that the privilege of their celebrity is the very thing that allows them enough distance from tragedy to make light of it.
Why’d You Go, Bo?
So, if the old material holds up, why do people want the new Bo Burnham comedy? Well, though much of the old stuff feels surprisingly fresh years later, it also sometimes shows its age. For example, the song “Repeat Stuff” is funny and actually quite a banger, but it takes aim specifically at parasocial relationships between teenage corporate pop stars and their young, female audience, which doesn’t hold as much relevance to the world of 2020. Similarly, Make Happy ends with a prolonged imitation of a segment from Kanye West’s 2013 Yeezus Tour, which carbon dates it as originating from the earlier half of the previous decade.
Credit: Comedy Central Records
Likewise, there are things about today’s media landscape that Burnham couldn’t have predicted or commented on. In Make Happy, Bo talks a lot about the influence his audience has on him but not as much about how performers influence their audiences. Much of the conversation in 2020 centers on the power a growing group of media stars have over impressionable fans and the need to hold them accountable when they misuse that power.
If Bo’s stand-up comedy career had continued beyond 2016, he could have lent his acerbic voice and sharp commentary to these issues, but for now, it seems like we might never know what he would think. However heartbroken Bo’s fans might be that he hasn’t returned to stand-up, any serious outrage would display a profound lack of understanding of his work.
Bo Burnham spent his whole career expounding upon the sometimes harmful effects of being both a performer and a fan and dispelling the notion that performers are obligated to fulfill the desires of their audiences. So, though it may seem like we need Bo Burnham now more than ever, we should let him follow his current artistic passions instead of demanding what we want. Meanwhile, we can always look back to his existing work with gratitude and heed the wisdom it still offers about the modern world.
