Comedy and music have always co-existed – but with artists from Dry Cleaning to Bo Burnham cleverly blurring the two, it’s hard to tell where the jokes begin and end
Some of my favourite music of this year was made by a comedian, and some of my favourite comedy by musicians. The comedian is Bo Burnham, whose Netflix standup special Inside was built around a series of songs satirising online life that were nuanced and sophisticated enough to completely transcend their comedy context. The accompanying album reached No 5 in the UK charts. The musicians are Dry Cleaning, a London post-punk outfit fronted by Florence Shaw, whose droll sprechgesang resembles left-field standup, her monologues filled with surrealism, sarcasm, offbeat observations and dialogue that brings to mind Victoria Wood or Alan Bennett. “I’m just sad about the collapse of heavy industry / I’ll be alright in a bit,” goes recent single Tony Speaks!.
These two examples are not outliers: it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell comedy-music and music-music apart. Earlier this month, spoof pirate radio crew Kurupt FM – the team behind the BBC sitcom People Just Do Nothing – released their debut album, The Greatest Hits (Part 1). They may be steeped in UK garage nostalgia but these songs are more than just punchlines – and many were made with serious collaborators (D Double E, Sir Spyro, Mist, Chase and Status). Plus, Kurupt FM have a background in music rather than comedy: they did actually do pirate radio for real initially, and Hugo Chegwin, who plays the credulous Beats, has worked as a songwriter for Sam Smith and Tinie Tempah. The crew also have a successful club night. The trend continues with Bad Boy Chiller Crew, the social media jokers who recently began making bassline, and are now a serious proposition – in both the big-time and not particularly funny senses.
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