RATING: 8/10
Bo Burnham surprised everyone this year with his release of a brand-new Netflix comedy special, 'Inside' which focused on being in lockdown. However, calling it a 'comedy' special may be a little misleading, as the reality is, it seemed like Burnham was having an existential crisis, and made anyone who watched the special feel exactly the same.
Much like many other of Burnham's special, a large part of it was musical, so an album was released of the songs that were featured. The songs range in length from less than a minute to over 5, and many also feature the dialogue from the special.
The thing about Bo Burnham is, although clearly, his focus is a comedy, he is actually a great musician too. This means that the songs from Inside are actually good, with any of them being hits on viral websites, to the point that 'All Eyes On Me' was released again without the dialogue in the middle so it flowed like an actual song.
It's no surprise that All Eyes On Me became a hit. The echoey vocals and heavy-on-synth instrumentals combine together to create a beautiful yet somewhat unnerving ambiance to the song. The lyrical content then focuses on the concept of anxiety and performance, including thought-provoking lines like "You say the whole world's ending? Honey, it already did".
Another stand-out song is 'That Funny Feeling', which sees Burnham take on an acoustic guitar as the background. Although the lyrics are comical in parts, the song's main focus is that feeling you get that you can't really explain, which is essential hyper self-awareness around living a normal life when the world seems to be ending. The brilliant thing is the way that because the feeling is never really described, it's completely up to interpretation by the listener.
The really impressive thing about this album is the way Burnham takes terrifying and brutal concepts, combines them with humour, and somehow creates a relatively consistent and listenable album with them. Burnham seems to really understand the mentality that a lot of young people are going through now, and put it into words, which is a very difficult thing to do.
I'm not saying it's the creme-de-la-creme of music right now, but it's one of the most interesting commentaries on life-as-we-know it right now, and it's got some pretty catchy tunes to it. Even if you haven't seen the special, the album alone is absolutely worth a listen if you're ready to be sent spiralling.
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