Music Comedians: High 15 Performers Immediately

One of many lodestars of comedy within the digital age — set to music or in any other case — Burnham grew up alongside and inside YouTube, the place he started posting songs in 2006 at age 16. The duality of IRL and on-line existence is without doubt one of the topics of his 2021 pandemic-isolation particular Inside, through which he builds movies inside movies, songs inside songs, and worlds inside worlds. A Grammy, Emmy and Peabody award winner, Inside layered jokes and commentary — political, philosophical, and existential — in ways in which repaid repeated views, with the self-reflexive byplay reaching a peak within the tune “How the World Works” when Burnham silenced Socko, a puppet who lives on his hand and whose Marxist critique of, properly, every thing had reminded Burnham of his personal privilege.

A prolific director, author, and actor, Burnham has been silent for the reason that 2021 launch of Inside, apart from an outtakes growth of the particular and album. However devoted followers noticed a conspicuously 6’5” masked determine in HBO’s Jerrod Carmichael Actuality Present final yr. Identified within the present as Nameless, he supplied assist to Carmichael whereas giving the side-eye to the soul-sucking actuality style. In a typical Burnham world-building contact, the black goggles that Nameless wore all through had been self-reflexively branded with a brand studying “ANON.”

In one other period, de Guzman — whose candy face supplies cowl for edge-skirting comedian songs about racial stereotypes (“Asian Guys Can Smash”), oral intercourse at Christmas (deck the halls with “fa-la-latio”) and ableism (“Amputee Girlfriend”) — could be a number of seasons right into a community sitcom primarily based on his life story. Born within the Philippines, he and his household moved to america when he was a yr outdated. “Simply an bold little child . . . bored with working within the manufacturing unit,” he jokes in his particular I’m Your Son, Papa. His father and brother are dentists; he graduated from the College of California, Davis and began educating music to 3rd graders.

A comedy class led to open mic nights, and he’s been mixing music and stand-up for over a decade. His stand-up leans to traditional joke-topper-capper buildings, however his punchlines land, and his routines construct to songs that work the identical means — a bit about political division results in a tune about uniting within the bed room, referred to as “She’s a Conservative in The Streets, A Liberal within the Sheets.” “I lean to left, she leans to the fitting,” he sings as he strums an R&B melody on his acoustic guitar. “Let’s get collectively and f–ok all evening.”

Skilled as a musician — she graduated from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins with a level in music composition in 2016 — D’Uva creates her personal backing tracks for items which are much less songs than mini-musicals through which she performs all of the characters. “After school I began doing improv and standup,” she says. “I had an thought to do a sketch, however I wasn’t in a sketch group, so I began doing every thing myself.”

Her work might be absurdist, associative, and form shifting — she cites Bjork as an inspiration (“each tune is like an opera”) — typically rooted in childhood, like a piece that unpacks gender roles whereas recounting her recollections of enjoying a cow in a kindergarten nativity play or “Nanny Franny,” a Mary Poppins fantasy primarily based on her personal day job. However after dropping her father to Covid within the pandemic, D’Uva says she wasn’t certain she remembered find out how to be humorous anymore, and the end result was an Off Broadway present at Playwrights Horizons referred to as This Is My Favourite Music that explored how grief reworked her relationship to comedy.

“I’m nonetheless discovering that,” she says. “However now my work is much more autobiographical.”

Capable of swing from intimate to over-the-top in a single breath, Everett counts amongst her many superpowers an easy potential to erase distinctions: alt and mainstream, private and energy ballad, vulnerability and hilarity. How nice is her vary? She could be the solely individual to have shared phases with Broadway legend Patti LuPone (who invited her to a Carnegie Corridor present to duet on “Me and Bobby McGee”) and Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (who performs bass in Everett’s continuously filthy and at all times rocking band the Tender Moments and co-produced 2013’s Pound It).

Her too-good-for-this-world HBO dramedy Any person Someplace — set in Manhattan, Kansas, the place she grew up — wrapped final yr after three seasons of exploring the fun and sorrows of small-town life, discovered household, and the best way music works in on a regular basis life, with Everett’s character discovering her energy performing songs by Peter Gabriel and Miley Cyrus at an LGBTQ gathering in a church. She’s now on tour with Tender Moments, delivering the gospel of “What I Gotta Do (To Get That Dick in My Mouth),” “Titties” (no rationalization wanted), and “Pussy Energy” (ditto).

Gordon focuses on millennial tune parodies: nü metallic (as Stool Pattern, he sings “Crawl to Me” seated on a bathroom a lot smaller than the one Limp Bizkit as soon as took on tour), emo (as Our Wounded Courtship he performs “My Life [Is the Worst Life Ever]” full with guyliner, inexperienced hair and fingerless gloves), and early-’00s EDM. (His Eurodisco spoof as DJ Loopy Instances, “Planet of the Bass,” was so spot-on that the tune debuted at No. 46 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart in 2023, and his character ended up on The Simpsons.) His albums specific nostalgia for outdated media: the primary, Kyle Gordon Is Nice, was arrange as a spin by means of the radio dial, and the current follow-up, Kyle Gordon Is Great, takes the type of a VH1 countdown.

At his greatest, he’s unshakably dedicated to the bit — he not too long ago adopted a morning TV performance of the Mumford/enjoyable send-up “We Will By no means Die” with an in-character interview as Kody Redwing that was all-too plausible: “You in all probability keep in mind me from season 11 of American Idol… I used to be type of notorious — I used to be the man who did 5 completely different variations of ‘Hallelujah.’” He not too long ago teamed up with the trio OCT (see beneath) for a summer-jam about middle-aged males behaving badly in “Myrtle Seaside”: “Butt bare within the swim-up bar! Now we’re banned from the swim-up bar.”

Although Tim and Eric Superior Present, Nice Job! made him an alt-comedy legend, Heidecker has at all times been extra a conceptualist than a comic — a lot in order that his stand-up album An Night With Tim Heidecker is a withering vivisection of crowd-work and observational comedy, with the one remotely straightforwardly humorous moments saved for the songs he performs: two from 2013’s Urinal Road Station, a whole album of faux-‘70s skunk-rock tunes about consuming urine, and one from 2017’s Too Dumb For Suicide, his sadly once-again-relevant album of songs about Donald Trump’s toxicity.

For the previous few years, although, his idea has been real songs, not jokes, along with his Very Good Band opening reveals for Waxahatchee and making an excellent album of cosmic American music, Slipping Away. However maybe sensing that Trump’s return demanded some comedian reduction, he instructed Rolling Stone final yr that the time had come to remind those who he nonetheless loves the “overtly humorous,” and he’s adopted by means of with the munchie-fueled “I’m Hungry,” a slice of harmony-laden pop recorded with indie duo the Lemon Twigs, which might have been at residence on one of many crackpot late-’70s Seaside Boys albums.

Lean and laid again — all the best way again — Jay has made a specialty of Auto-Tuned crowd work that may be a pure pleasure to look at. Mic in hand, with the digital enhancement “set all the best way to Travis Scott” and his accompanist vamping hushed R&B chords, he works his means by means of the viewers, poking on the traditional matters (relationship standing, jobs, garments) in an Auto-Tuned falsetto that traces boudoir-ready melody traces whereas he prods his topics to sing their responses. Which they typically do — his TikTok sensation “Just Friends?” (through which a man named Ethan nails his personal Auto-Tuned replies) has been seen greater than 129 million instances, so the crowds now don’t simply know what to anticipate, they present up for it.

However with Jay packing 1200-capacity theaters (typically for a number of nights), additionally they present up for his songs. Matters embody troublesome couple conversations (“What Are We”), shifting in collectively (“Residence Intruder”), and latent gay wishes (“Bro”). In the meantime, the tone ranges from the calculatedly outrageous “Fuck Proper Now,” a yolo-themed plea for everybody to smash as typically as attainable, to the truly considerate “The Different Aspect” — which dares to ask, “Is being single actually that courageous, or is loving somebody actually what makes you afraid?” amidst jokes concerning the tyranny of relationship selections, and noticing that the super-hot drunk woman you’re coming onto is lacking a tooth.

A real renaissance man, Lane’s current Hulu hour The Al Dente Particular was accompanied by a cookbook, Your Pasta Sucks. And although he now not spotlights singing in his standup, there might not be a greater pure vocalist on this record. A skilled opera singer with a six octave vary when his voice is rested (“I used to have whistle tones like Mariah Carey — they popped out of nowhere — however if you’re touring they arrive few and much between”), Lane as soon as opened his units warbling the Puccini soprano aria “O mio babbino caro” (“Oh my expensive Papa”), bowed, then stated, “That may be a true story of how I got here out to my dad.”

He limits his crowd work to the yearly Q&A periods that type his must-see Advice specials, and his occasional singing has racked up large numbers in social media clips. These have included a towering-inferno impression of Christina Aguilera’s melisma (“what I really like about her is that she provides phrases to phrases”), the conduct that clued his mother into his sexual orientation (serenading the birds of their yard like Sleeping Magnificence), and an improv’d song that defined the polymorphous flexibility of being “vers”: “When two males love one another . . . or simply know one another . . . or don’t even know one another . . .”

You might know Lindhome as one half of Garfunkel and Oates, the comedy-music duo that she and Kate Matucci started in 2007 and spun out into three albums, one EP, and one season of an IFC sequence that surrounded their songs with sitcom plots that did for girls’s conversations (and dissatisfactions) what Curb Your Enthusiasm did for grumpy outdated males. Or chances are you’ll know her as one half of the Bellacourt Sisters, the turn-of-the-Twentieth-century siblings that she and Natasha Leggaro performed within the Kardashian-spoofing Comedy Central sequence One other Interval.

Or maybe you already know her from one of many clothing-optional movie roles she begs her two-year-old son to not seek for on-line within the current lullabye “Don’t Google Mommy”: “Mommy’s an actress, and typically she acts in scenes which are naughty/ And now everybody in Gymboree can see your mommy’s physique.” “Don’t Google Mommmy” shall be on Lindhome’s first solo full-length, No Worries if Not, in March, alongside songs from Useless Inside, her one-woman musical concerning the decade she spent on the highway to motherhood, together with the rock-me-gently bed room come-on “Center Age Love”: “You put on a sleep apnea machine, I’m early menopause — let’s f–ok.” 

This trio focuses on songs that push silliness up the asymptote in the direction of the infinite: “Don’t Contact My Clogs” is an epic story that spans generations with out ever straying from the directions of the title; “Dim Sum Paradise” is the story of a bus journey to Chinatown to search out the Shangri-La the place your “style buds burst like a distant star”; “(So Sick Of) Giving You Up” is a just-can’t-quit-you bop about making an attempt to cease Juuling; “Half Horse Half Man” is a would-be Eurovision contender about not being man sufficient (actually) to make a relationship work.

Every one is hooked to a observe that turns the vulnerabilities and synth-cold loneliness of ‘80s rainbow pop inside out and accompanied by a video overstuffed with ridiculous imagery (to name these movies harking back to the Lonely Island is to understate the case). OCT (stands for On Firm Time) has not too long ago teamed up with Kyle Gordon for a summer time banger about divorced dads gone wild, “Myrtle Seaside”: “Blackjack at 3 p.m! We’re gonna make errors! Huge Gulps each meal — free refill, that’s a hell of a deal.”

A light-mannered absurdist, Platt guarantees “jokes and songs and characters and stuff,” all of which he delivers with charming command from someplace means out in left area. His songs — typically simply snatches of melody anchoring a single head scratching thought or punchline — are rooted within the natural-born surrealism of childhood, dwelling within the huge and untamed house between Syd Barret and Phoebe Buffay. So it is smart that he’s contributed a tune to Sesame Road, the salad roll name “V is Vegetable” (“Broccoli and cauliflower, your tops look similar to little clouds! Think about veggies flying within the air!”).

However together with a quick goof about spreading mustard on a cucumber and a jingle celebrating the power of pencils to each write and erase, his current debut album, Teeth Like Beak, contains the extra totally developed “God Is Actual,” a satire that jauntily explores the “fantasy that we imagine a superb God pulls the strings” after we know “the horror that religion in God doth brings” but in addition professes an actual religion sophisticated by the Almighty’s poisonous masculinity: “If he was she and he or she was queer, we wouldn’t want this tune.” It’s a fancy and hilarious must-hear that makes you wish to see what Platt would do with a Broadway stage and a limiteless funds.

Rebillet is extra an improvisational producer than an improv comedian. Often called Loop Daddy, he shines in let-him-cook livestreams which discover him constructing ready-for-the-floor layers of beats and keyboard runs into trancey funk, bluesy r&b, electro-house, or spaced-out hip-hop tracks after which ranting, rapping or singing on high of the outcomes. Collaborations with Flying Lotus, Erykah Badu, and Elle King bear out his musical bona fides, as does the current gospel-and-funk-soaked single “Vibes Alright.” However for those who’re in search of amusing, dial up his late-capitalism tirade “Fuck You Boss I’m Late,” as some 33 million Tik-Tok viewers have already got, or head to your DSP for “Take a look at That Ass” or “Work That Ass for Daddy,” each of which hover simply above (or is that beneath?) the parody line.

Rogers co-hosts the “Las Culturistas” podcast with Bowen Yang, a dryly intoxicating gabfest that goes down like a glitter-spiked martini. However — transfer over, Mariah — since 2017 he’s additionally been the self-proclaimed Prince of Christmas, mixing the committed-to-the-bit deadpan outrageousness of Sandra Bernhard with the over-the-top diva stylings of the Queen of Christmas herself and making the Yuletide very homosexual with such songs as “Lube for Christmas” (Santa wants a approach to match all these presents within the sleigh), “Hottest Feminine Up in Whoville” (Martha Could Whovier is finished with the Grinch and coming in your man), and “Additionally It’s Christmas” (“It’s been months, now I’m lastly able to get again within the sport/To attach in a darkish nook after which overlook your title”).

His pop-star-trapped-in-snow-globe idea began with reveals at Joe’s Pub in New York Metropolis and has blossomed right into a Showtime special and album, Have You Heard It’s Christmas?, in addition to seasonal excursions that, this yr, will see him ringing within the holidays at Manhattan’s 3000-capacity Terminal 5. “You understand how they are saying in musicals when you may now not communicate you need to sing? That’s my actuality,” Rogers says. “I’ve at all times been somebody who will simply escape into tune. I don’t know what that’s. Most likely a deep, deep gayness.”

Is he a comic? A musician? A bricolage artiste? His comedy specials and music are so radically recombinant it’s maybe higher to let Watts outline himself: “An eccentric, an artist, a connoisseur of weed and Robitussin and outdated James Bond flicks. A performer who created a consistently altering melange of music and improv and expertise and simply plain f–king round that’s so irregular I nonetheless don’t know what precisely it’s.” That’s how he places it in his 2023 autobiography, Nice Falls, MT: Quick Instances, Submit-Punk Weirdos, and a Story of Coming Residence Once more. Give Watts — who partnered with Billboard and Amazon for his MuSick efficiency at Coachella this yr — your consideration and he won’t merely make you giggle, he’ll blow your thoughts.

His songs work like magic tips as he piles up human-beatbox loops, electronics, and Monty Python-esque surrealism, creating them out of skinny air. And as if classics like “Fuck Shit Stack” (which brings George Carlin’s seven soiled phrases into the hip-hop period) weren’t sufficient, he’s equally able to straight-up dancefloor fillers, as his current EP with digital provocateurs Capyac proves. Not satisfied of the sprawl of his genius? Dial up his cowl of “Brownsville Lady” and hearken to him recast Bob Dylan as a dancehall reggae and drum-n-bass songwriter.

Keyboardist Tom McGovern describes the Wolves as a rock band “making an attempt to jot down one of the best songs we are able to concerning the dumbest issues we are able to.” True sufficient, although he, guitarist Ethan Edenburg, and drummer Eric Jackowitz push these dumb issues to a very epic scale. Within the bro-country stomper “Ricky,” a wage slave tries to lasso some cowboy freedom by shopping for the horse within the tune’s title, however he’s in over his head (“Ricky is wanting hungry however I don’t know what he eats/ So I make him ravioli and I pray he goes to sleep”). The yacht rocker “Olivia” is about falling for the 200-year-old ghost who haunts your residence (“she says I kiss higher than Thomas Edison”).

Each songs captivate of their gleefully absurdist movies, and each pile up extra plot twists than your common Netflix comedy: Ricky’s proprietor finally ends up punching a mounted policeman and goes to jail; Olivia’s boyfriend has to feed her neighborhood puppies to take care of her corporal type. All of which has received this Los Angeles trio an viewers so devoted it pelts the band with stuffed canines in the course of the sacrificial climax of “Olivia.” “On the finish of the evening we’ve obtained 50 stuffed animals,” says Jackowitz. “We seem like Beanie Child hoarders.”