June 2021 was another great month for music, with possibly the most anticipated album of the year— Tyler, the Creator’s CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST—being released to critical acclaim. While the album was certainly among the highlights of the month for me, along with Backxwash’s dark industrial hip-hop on I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES and the lush indie pop of Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee, I ultimately found Bo Burnham’s pessimistic synthpop on Inside (The Songs) to be the most impressive.
Bo Burnham, an LA-based artist, is famous for his idiosyncratic blend of humor and introspection. On Inside (The Songs), his first solo project since 2016’s Make Happy, he perfected his craft and created a collection of songs from his bedroom that reflects the emotional journey of the pandemic extraordinarily well.
The album is split into two clear parts, or “acts”. Much of the first half of the album is filled with songs that, while reflecting the reality of quarantine, are largely humorous and comment on the more superficial changes that took place in everyday life. Bo mocks Instagram stereotypes (“White Woman’s Instagram”), awkward virtual communication (“Facetime with my Mom (Tonight)”), and his past (“Problematic”) through catchy pop songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Top 40 radio station. These are immensely enjoyable songs that all feature lyricism with more thematic depth than one might expect from the subject matter. The relatively lighthearted yet subtly anxious humor of these tracks reflects how some, including myself, felt at the beginning of the pandemic: we joked about attending Zoom classes and trying to figure out Microsoft Teams to mask the genuine fear and uncertainty felt about the future.
Among the more fleshed-out aforementioned tracks are shorter ones that hint at the growing depression and anxiety felt throughout the pandemic. On “Look Who’s Inside Again”, Bo compares quarantine to sitting in his room as a lonely kid, writing funny songs to escape his seemingly infinite sadness and boredom. Towards the end of the song, he sings “Well, well, look who’s inside again/Went out to look for a reason to hide again”, suggesting that he finds some comfort in the familiar melancholy of loneliness. The final song of the first act, “30”, features Bo turning thirty and portrays the feeling that he’s done nothing worthwhile with his life so far. The first part of Inside (The Songs) fantastically demonstrates the use of humor to mask fear during the early weeks of the pandemic.
At the beginning of the second act – which is marked by the track “Don’t Wanna Know” – Bo shows how his mental health is significantly declining. Within the first three tracks he expresses his insecurities over his declining self-care and whether his audience will enjoy his art, and he announces that his mental health is “rapidly approaching an… all-time low”. The tracks that follow this opening stretch of the second act are undoubtedly the best on the album in my opinion. On “Welcome to the Internet”, Bo takes a well-worn sentiment (“Look how crazy the internet is!”) and turns it into a chaotic and cynical advertisement for instant gratification. Over an organ instrumental evoking images of a crazed carnival barker, Bo connects with his audience by asking: “Could I interest you in everything all of the time?/A little bit of everything all of the time?/Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime/Anything and everything all of the time”. The song is incredibly chilling, as Bo comes across as a manipulative marketer attempting to indoctrinate more people into his internet “circus”.
The songs “That Funny Feeling” and “All Eyes On Me” form the climax of the album. These songs couldn’t be more different in sound, with “Feeling” consisting only of a lazily-played acoustic guitar and Bo’s voice, and “Eyes” being a maximalist electropop anthem. However, both songs feature Bo facing his insecurities head-on without the mask of humor he previously wore. In “That Funny Feeling”, he messily lays out his worries and insecurities with an extraordinary level of vulnerability. He fears the knee-jerk reactions brought about by social media (“The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun”), the incongruities of American culture (“A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall”), his growing isolation from the world (“A book on getting better hand-delivered by a drone”), and his inability to stop climate change (“That unapparent summer air in early fall/The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all”). He sums up all these worries by singing, “There it is again, that funny feeling”. Bo never explicitly states what that “funny feeling” is, but it seems to be the feeling of derealization, disenchantment, and ennui that many knew all too well during quarantine. In “All Eyes On Me”, Bo inserts sounds of a live crowd to replace the company he used to dread but now desperately craves. He again frets over his audience’s enjoyment of his work (“Are you feeling nervous? Are you having fun”), hoping that he can give others a sense of comfort during the pandemic, but worrying that he isn’t doing enough. He realizes that while the pandemic may be ending, the deep-rooted troubles that it exposed are not going away anytime soon, singing “It’s almost over, it’s just begun”. Bo hopes his art will provide a safe, if fleeting, respite from the outside world, as he sings, “We’re going to go where everybody knows”.
The final song of the album, aptly titled “Goodbye”, mourns the ending of his work on Inside, losing the purpose he’s found in it throughout quarantine. He sings: “I’m slowly losing power/Has it only been an hour?/No, that can’t be right” and “Do I really have to finish?”. In the climactic bridge, Bo reiterates his fears that he hasn’t grown at all as a person or done anything worthwhile by singing, “Am I going crazy? Would I even know?/Am I right back where I started fourteen years ago?”. He fears that his anxiety and loneliness will never leave him: “Wanna guess the ending? If it ever does/I swear to God that all I’ve ever wanted was/A little bit of everything all of the time”. Bo removes his defensive mechanisms and his mask of humor, and he ends the album in a state of complete vulnerability and poor mental health, a place where many found themselves towards the end of quarantine. The pandemic lost any novelty or silver lining that it may have originally had, resulting in a complete acknowledgment of the sad truth of it all.
For myself, Bo Burnham’s Inside (The Songs) captured the reality of the pandemic better than any other piece of art. It balances humor and emotion exceptionally well, relates to his audience, and is extraordinarily enjoyable and well-produced. I wouldn’t be surprised if Inside is studied as a time capsule of this unique moment in history in schools and universities; it’s the only piece of art that perfectly evokes that funny feeling.
The Verdict: For its sleek production, timely themes, and personal impact, Inside (The Songs) is June 2021’s Album of the Month.
