Turn down the world tonight piano11/2/2022 ![]() ![]() But then you realize that what gives these songs their weight is the presence of the guy dying to make us laugh.JOURNEY ? Turn Down The World Tonight from the Revelation (2008) record Intro: A, D Verse 1: Caught up in the living. ![]() Perhaps they’d sound more muscular for sure they’d get closer to the radio. Listening to “Inside (The Songs),” you can wonder what it might sound like to hear a “real” singer do “That Funny Feeling” or “White Woman’s Instagram” or “ All Eyes on Me,” a bleary and haunting trap-soul ballad about Burnham’s struggles with anxiety. Yet even that would-be liability feels somehow essential to his deeply personal music, as key to “Inside” as the goofy exuberance of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rapping was to “Hamilton” (whose songs were improved not at all when famous hip-hop and R&B stars cut them for “The Hamilton Mixtape”). What still constrains Burnham is his voice it remains the brittle, somewhat pinched instrument he began using more than a decade ago on YouTube. If anything, the result has more in common with someone like the late Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, whose wit always rivaled his ease in any genre. (Crucially, Burnham never seems to be condescending to the various pop idioms he takes up throughout “Inside.”) The feeling in these tunes isn’t just in the lyrics but in the music - an important distinction from, say, “Weird Al” Yankovic’s comedic parodies, in which the music is meant to get out of the way of the words. 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 (Tonight)” and the throbbing beat in “Sexting,” which is about 85% toward being a Post Malone song. Hooks, too: Burnham’s composition and production skills - evidently he functions as a one-man band - have expanded and improved along with his writing. #Turn down the world tonight piano pro#The formal relationship in Burnham’s work - music in the service of comedy - was more or less maintained as he ascended from YouTube glory to Comedy Central stardom, which is one reason his 2010 album was called “Words Words Words” and not “Notes Notes Notes.” (Burnham’s rise was so speedy that he turned down an invitation to study experimental theater at NYU to go pro at age 18.) But the relationship shows signs of change with “Inside,” his much-discussed Netflix special that dropped over Memorial Day weekend and last week spawned a standalone collection of songs available on streaming platforms including Spotify.įor the first time, you can credibly argue that Burnham, now 30, has used comedy as a vehicle to deliver music. The song had clever (if callow) rhymes, to be sure, but even those relied on the clip’s grainy pre-iPhone footage to get over: You had to see Burnham arching his eyebrows to understand exactly when he was making a particularly cringe-y joke. ![]() When Bo Burnham broke out back in the early days of YouTube - his first viral video, from 2006, showed him in his childhood bedroom, performing an original song about how his whole family thinks he’s gay - his music rarely felt like more than a vehicle designed to carry his comedy.Ī kind of rinky-dink show tune minus the show, “My Whole Family…” offered little in the way of a memorable melody, nor was its arrangement, plunked out by the teenage comedian on a cheap keyboard, anything to savor. ![]()
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