Why Bo Burnham's 'Inside' deserves its deluxe vinyl treatment
Alexander Burgess
STACK Writer
In the years before 'Inside', we came to know the side of Bo Burnham that he ultimately wanted us to see; the charismatic internet personality turned comedy extraordinaire, who possessed undeniable showmanship and a prodigious talent for writing a tune.
Since his foray into stardom in the early 2010’s, the gifted songster has dazzled (and routinely offended) audiences with his subversive musical performances, which serve to satirise and distract us from life’s everyday drabness and litany of contradictions.
It essentially took a five-year performing hiatus, along with a global pandemic - which forced Bo to step away from the limelight and the refuge it provided him - to properly stop and face himself, as well as the current state of the world around him. Inside brilliantly captured the entire experience raw and unfiltered, right in the moment that it was happening. The results are often confronting, and at times disconcerting... but in the end, endearingly entertaining.
Inside’s lavish arrangements are awash with feelings of isolation and anxiety. These provide the perfect soundtrack to Burnham’s stream-of-consciousness thinking, as he tries to navigate through the sobering reality of not only being physically trapped inside a room, but metaphorically trapped within his own mind.
The recordings (which originally featured on the Netflix comedy special of the same name) include healthy doses of seditious social commentary, particularly concerning the place of social media and technology in our lives (Welcome to the Internet and White Woman’s Instagram), but can also be touchingly sentimental at times (FaceTime with my Mom (Tonight)).
Elsewhere, Burnham displays a humorous indifference towards his self-perceived purpose in society (Content), and then crafts passages of beautiful melancholy (Look Who’s Inside Again) and heart-wrenching sadness (All Time Low). Musically, the score is a technicolour soundscape as sonically diverse as the spectrum of themes which these tracks explore.
Inside may be claustrophobic and challenging, but it contributes to the enthralling opus that Burnham has been able to create throughout one of the most despondent periods in recent history, the effects of which he admits are far from being a thing of the past: “It’s almost over/ It’s just begun.”
Inside (Deluxe Edition) by Bo Burnham drops via Imperial Distribution.
STAY INSIDE WITH BO BURNHAM
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