You know you’re in for an interesting show when the first song is titled “My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay.” And Bo Burnham didn’t disappoint by leaving out anything raunchy, satirically racial or taboo.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the YouTube sensation, Bo (short for Robert) Burnham, would be the love child of Shakespeare and ”Werid Al” Yankovic; his lyrics are filled with raunchy, yet hysterical, puns that leave the audience questioning their own morals. At the young age of 19, Bo has already established himself as an Internet cultural sensation, even garnering the attention of Judd Apatow and penning a musical for him. Bo is currently on tour promoting his self-titled album, produced by Comedy Central.
Before Bo even stepped foot onto Bailey Hall’s stage on Monday night, the audience was reminded to shut off all of their electronics, which included laptops and caused confusion among audience members. Who would bring a laptop to a comedy show? Oddly enough, one girl in the corner did have a laptop. Silly Cornellian! Laptops are for classes, not comedy shows!
When Bo emerged, he was dressed like a typical 19-year old in too-low jeans, exposing his whale boxers and a stripped sweater. He even accessorized with a Red Bull. Then, like the maestro of a piano concerto, he approached the piano and began “My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay.” Halfway through the song, a member of the Cornell sound stage stepped out onto the stage to turn on Bo’s microphone. And without missing a beat, Bo stopped his song, turned to the audience and jokingly observed how “a fat Mr. Rogers” had fixed his microphone.
Once he finished his first song, Bo stepped out from behind the piano and began to banter with the audience. “I feel like I’m at a slave auction,” quipped the performer about Bailey Hall. Before he started his next song, Bo introduced us with the inspiration behind “The Perfect Woman.” “My ex-girlfriend had a weird fetish. She would dress up as herself and act like a bitch.” The audience loved it.
After singing about how Helen Keller is the ideal girlfriend, he then took the time to speak to a student named Iris who had shouted out that she loved him. “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. When she responded no, he had Iris come onto the stage so he could play Love Connection with the audience member. “There has to be one guy who’s interested in Iris!?” he asked. And with that Iris and an audience member Jordan were set up. Whether they stayed together after the show is unknown at press time.
Bo then played one of his newer songs “Men & Women.” “Women are like puzzles cause prior to 1920 neither had the right to vote. Puzzles still don’t,” he sang. From there, he sang “High School Party,“ a song about a fictional party that he never attended “because [I] like soda. Where’s the soda? Am I the only fucking person here that likes soda?”
Following that little diddy, Bo took to his handy dandy triangle to read some haikus he wrote. “For $0.15 a day, you can feed an African. They eat pennies,” he read. The audience members, who were cackling like witches, were then directed to Bo Burnham’s brother, Pete Burnham ’08, fraternity Phi Sig. “They’re like the old men from the Muppets — if they were homophobic,” he joked.
Finishing after an hour, Bo Burnham closed the show with “I’m Bo Yo.” While the entire show seemed to go by too fast, neither did it leave the audience checking their cell phones to see what time it was. As one student, Mallory Marder ’12, put it, “He has mastered the art of being enjoyably awkward.” If the Cornell audience was an indicator of the general public, it looks like Bo will have a long future being enjoyably awkward for a long time to come.
