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YouTube videos such as "Unforgivable" and "Old Greg" usually provide silly humor and sensational quotes, but a deeper yet still hilarious phenomenon can be found in 18-year-old Bo Burnham.
Bo Burnham, a comedic singer-songwriter, began posting videos on YouTube almost two years ago. Today Burnham's videos have garnered him much Internet fame, a contract with Comedy Central and gigs from California to London. Burnham graduated from an all boys' Catholic high school in 2008. His song lyrics were inspired by inside jokes among his friends. Most of Burnham's songs make fun of himself, comprised of lyrics too inappropriate for any venue but the Internet.
One of his first recorded songs, "My Whole Family," tells of Burnham's struggle to prove to his family that just because he can't pick up girls, it does not mean that he is gay.
Burnham began to teach himself guitar and piano during his junior year of high school. He recorded his first two songs in December 2006, posted them on YouTube and became an Internet sensation.
Since then, Burnham has released 12 videos through YouTube and MySpace. He now has an EP available on iTunes titled "Bo Fo Sho" that reached No. 6 on top iTunes albums.
Burnham's videos often begin with him making an awkward statement about the hot girl he knows or why the audience should buy his EP to an unseen third party sometimes identified as "somebody reliable" or "the ghost of Martin Luther King Jr." Burnham then proceeds to his song or rap, accompanied by himself on either the keyboard or acoustic guitar.
In extremely politically incorrect fashion, Burnham sings about Hellen Keller, racism and religion. While all of Burnham's songs contain lyrics that are offensive, he presents them in a satirical manner, so that even songs such as "Klan Kookout," about a white supremacists' barbecue, are humorous and not degrading. In the title track, "Bo Fo Sho," Burnham raps "get thee to a punnery," and that is just what he does.
Most of Burnham's songs, especially "New Math" and "I'm Bo Yo" rely heavily on puns and wordplay for laughs. In "New Math," Burnham uses calculus terms as a start off for jokes such as, "What's the opposite of lnx? Duraflame the unnatural log." He then goes on to equate sex to several rules of basic arithmetic. While some of Burnham's jokes seem too commonplace and fail to hit the mark, many are either so unexpected or ironic that you can't help but laugh. In "3.14 Apple Pi," Burnham's "gangster rap," he tells of the thug life where he grew up in Massachusetts with lines like, "I've been doing drive-bys all of my life, except the bullets are newspapers, the car is my bike."
Burnham also reveals his 'drug use' rapping, "You know I do Coke, but I had to go to diet cause it burned my throat," and "Took my cereal, stabbed it open with a knife, snorted that [stuff] and got high on Life." Burnham's songs are self-produced, usually in his bedroom, with a camera resting on a stack of books. Burnham has also posted non-musical videos, including his comical version of a Honda commercial and a public service announcement about drugs.
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