The Whack World of Musical Comedy

A joke is like a frog.

When you dissect it, it dies. Get it? Just like a frog dies when you dissect it, so does a joke when you explain it. Basically, the frog is used as an analogy, to help people understand that jokes shouldn't be explained, because the joke will die, or more specifically, become unfunny. So, just like when a frog dies when you dissect it, so does a joke when you dissect, or explain it.

The above is one of my favourite meta jokes from the r/jokes subreddit and it perfectly illustrates what I plan to do in this article. I would like to list down my favourite musical comedy acts from least to most favourite and explain the genius behind this under-appreciated art form.This is just shy of a listicle so I think I still get to keep my credibility as a blogger and a writer. Be warned, I will put these acts under a microscope and I would wish for you the reader to experience these acts blind and laugh at them before I ruin it by analysing them so I implore you to click and watch all the links first before reading what I have to say about them.

Musical comedy at a passing glance seems to be a misfit, an equivalent would be interpretive baking. However it combines my two favourite things and takes the best of both worlds. Music is about repetition, in the words of Adam Neely: "repetition legitimises." Repetition leads to predictability and when a comedian has expert control of an audience's need to predict and to expect, therein lies the comedy. Vsauce does a great job of explaining how comedy is basically the subversion of expectation A.K.A. surprise to those of us not trying to hit a word count. To put it simply, music creates a predictable structure with which comedians can bend to their will in order to surprise an audience.

Dream Theater

Dream Theater (or to those of us using the Queen's english, Dream Theatre) is a highly technical progressive rock/metal band better known for the intense mastery that each member has over their instrument. They write insane songs with odd time signatures and many lasting well over the typical 4 minute average (here's one lasting 24 minutes). Being nobody's candidate for funniest musician the band is a great example of subversion of expectation through music's predictable nature. In the song Metropolis Pt 1: The Miracle And The Sleeper (for the curious cats, part 2 is an entire album), the bulk of it is an extended instrumental that flows through many styles and changes. Though the song is unpredictable in general, it follows some musical feeling or vibe at the very least but at 7:09 the band plays a series of nonsensical notes with awkward pauses and no musical direction. It ruined the entire momentum of the song and I honestly find it very amusing. It's not going to make anybody laugh unless you truly are boring but it's a great starting point to illustrate musical comedy at it's most basic level.

Acts that use music as a kicker

There are many comedians out there who perform musical acts and comedy and sometimes combine the two but never fully use either to it's fullest potential. Animaniac's Nations of the World Song comes to mind. The music is entertaining and I guess listing the countries is humorous at best, but the music serves nothing for the humour besides giving it a form to exist as. In the same vein is Jay Foreman's Every Tube Song. I don't have much to say about this other than this is the most boring form of musical comedy because it gives no reason for the two art forms to be combined.

Those that use music as a comedic subject

Dissecting music has great potential for laughs because the general public has enough understanding of the subject matter for it to be relatable but not enough that the jokes are predictable. A fine example is Bill Bailey, a great musical comedian. It would be an insult to his talent if I just talked about him in a musical comedic capacity, his humour is oddly nonsensical and educated, often going on surrealist rambles. Here's an example of him in a musical comedic capacity. The fact that music has so much structure allows small changes to be so funny and Bill Bailey expertly plays on the feelings of songs and mismatches them with the emotional content to create humour. A clearer example of this is Leo Moracchioli's entire body of work on his Youtube channel. Metal, being a genre with such a narrow emotional spectrum (basically anger, despair, fear and occasionally love), is a great style to cover other songs in to amuse people with the dissonance. Leo takes it a step further, at some point around the 6th or 7th video you start to realise Leo's covers aren't about the novelty but a true love of what the metal genre has to offer. Every song he covers is done lovingly, often incorporating breakdowns and completely rewriting the rhythms making his covers less of a leech off of the popularity of other songs and more of a demonstration of his own art. My favourite cover of his is the meme-king Africa by Toto with a kickass solo by Rabea Massad and an arguably better groove that serves as credits.

An offshoot of this is the Axis of Awesome's 4 Chord Song which again meta-analyses the overuse of the 1,5,6,4 chord progression we commonly hear. Here on top of being a great use of the combination of music and art, it provides some, if shallow, social commentary on the formulaic nature of music and the brain-dead simplicity of pop music. No great comedian is complete without some social commentary. Like chips with fish as the greats say. Okay nobody says that but please start quoting me on that I'm trying to start something here.

Tim Minchin

Trained as a musician first, Tim has been a composer for Matilda the Musical and was supposed to direct and score his own animated film until it got scrapped (why do the good die young?). But he is best known for his comedy acts. Just him and a piano, Tim performs concerts with a varied magazine of songs ranging from Didn't have you, a light-hearted number hypothesising the tangents that would happen were he not to marry his wife to Dark Side, a self-reflexive song delving into the nature of him as an artist and even still to 3 minute song, a playful nudge at TV forcing a time limit on his performance. More than a comedian, he's a talented musician. He literally wrote a 7 minute song about Cheese which was really an excuse to flex his musical training. On top of that the orchestral arrangements are simply a marvel to behold. Peel back the comedy and Tim still has a solid performance as a pianist and composer. More than just a skilled musician, he is a skilled musician with something to say. Songs like The Fence show that he's not a comedian screaming "Look at me I'm deep!". His topics are presented in a way that are up for fair discussion, matured and often well argued despite being in song form. He, like many a great comedian, is also not afraid to offend, I Love Jesus says it all. He has strong opinions, mainly about religion and he yells it unapologetically and he yells it well. He tickles those ivories and he tickles me pink with his wit and talent, using the best of both types of acts.

Bo Burnham

For a long time I put Tim Minchin above Bo Burnham because he had a far grander performance and more musical talent but when I fully appreciated the genius behind the lyrics in some of his songs I couldn't help but change my mind. Some of you may have guessed this spot on the list. A self-made star, this depressed boi was a scrawny teen who uploaded youtube videos before he went viral and got his own comedy show. Though his live shows are impressive, I believe some of his best work was from his Youtube days. The effort behind his songs isn't immediately obvious, it requires equal effort from the listener to dissect his layers. One of his best songs, Words Words Words, has wordplay akin to Eminem most of which flew way over my head the first listen. More than just a collection of puns, many of his double meanings have more layers behind that and none are played just for the sake of smarts all of it means something. On top of that his songs are incredibly funny as well. Just like Tim, he is an artist with something important to say but more than that, he says it with the full honesty of a young adult who doesn't really know much more beyond his privileged straight, white, male life (he wrote a song about it as well). He is hyper aware of society's flaws and is always self-deprecating and meta in his humour. He branched out into films as well, directing his first feature film to critical acclaim, Eighth Grade. Though he may not be the most musically gifted, he makes up for it with sheer ingenuity. Take my favourite song by him, Can't Handle This. The form of the song is already a poke towards Kanye and his privileged problems. He then goes on to create humour by juxtaposing the melancholic nature of the song with trivial problems like over-stuffing a burrito, again making fun of artists who complain undeservedly. The burrito-stuffing unravels into an analogy about him not being able to handle his current life as a successful comedian at the same time acknowledging how he has little right to complain. Filled with emotion, he performs the song with brilliant production to reach an emotional climax that I simply have never seen in a comedy show. Bo Burnham is arguably the most relevant comedian in the industry, relating to audience's problems in a way no other comedian can touch and for that I he is my favourite musical comedian.

If you've made it this far, I thank you for indulging me in my interest into a niche art. Comedy is a hard skill to learn and an even harder industry to succeed. We should never take for granted the genius behind comedians who have found their audience and have something to say. May we laugh and learn.