Kyle Gordon Is Looking to Make More Crazy Times in 2024
Photo by Arin Sang-Urai Comedy Features Kyle Gordon
The first time you saw Kyle Gordon, he probably didn’t look like Kyle Gordon. He might have been sporting the pinstripes, horn-rimmed glasses, and probable laudanum addiction of an old-time baseball player. He might have been in the dapper turtleneck and questionable morals of Antonio Frankfurt, or the fringed vest of Tanya McCabe. You almost definitely saw him in the flame-red hair and mirrored Oakleys of DJ Crazy Times. You probably did not meet him as a normal, pleasant-seeming man, as I did on our Zoom, which is a testament both to his talent and to the comedic specificity in his musical parodies of 1990s Eurodance, ‘60s bossa nova, and 2000s girl-country, along with his ever-expanding roster of TikTok-famous characters.
What’s most striking about Gordon’s increasingly viral videos are that his characters seem beamed in from another time. They are people who could only exist in the specific historical era they came from. “That’s definitely an extension of my own interest in history,” says Gordon, “These phrases, or attitudes, or world views, that would seem completely normal to someone in their age that sound completely bizarre and anachronistic now. These characters are presenting their views with full self-confidence and no self-awareness in the year 2024.” It’s that interest in history that leads to characters who talk about getting “three ha’pennies a week,” even as they rack up 11 million plays on technology that would have been completely alien to them.
Among the many comedians whose works can be seen in short form, front-facing videos, Gordon’s work stands out because of how little wasted motion there is. Everything these characters say is funny, and if there’s a joke that’s taking you a little time to digest, the next one has already come along to take its place. “Being able to condense a character piece down to punchline-punchline-punchline on TikTok, and trim off all the fat, really suited what I like to do,” notes Gordon, and from the legions of comments on his page that are just quoting lines from the videos back at him, it’s clear that it also suits his audience.
“I’ve always been attracted to playing characters,” adds Gordon. “Some people can get on stage and essentially always be a version of themselves and I quickly realized that, based on my taste, I was at my best playing someone not like me. I like being big and cartoony.” While cartoony does describe the joke after joke pacing of his videos, I think it undersells how lived-in these characters feel. After all, to note that Eurodance tracks often had baffling lyrics is one thing (we all loved Cascada), but to make such a pitch-perfect parody of them that the song genuinely makes it to 46 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart is another matter entirely.
It’s hard to avoid talking about “Planet of the Bass” with Gordon, given that it was a sensation that eventually led to him performing with the Jonas Brothers. Phrases such as “how does it mean?”, “cyber system overload,” and my own personal favorite, “electric, ELECTRIC,” became shorthand in the summer of 2023, and the resultant buzz overtook anything the comedian had worked on before. “The template I look to is something like Austin Powers,” Gordon says, “in that it’s a movie based off of a set or really niche references, but for an audience that couldn’t tell you anything about Swinging London or Burt Bacharach. The people who knew what he was working off loved it, but the people who only had an ambient sense of what was being referenced also loved it, and that’s what I’m always working towards.”
And so, with a roster of musical creations ready to be brought to life outside of your phone screen, Gordon is moving onwards with his comedy, taking his works on tour in the spring of 2024 and releasing his debut album, which will be composed of the songs he’s been working on over his decade spent in the New York comedy scene. With genres ranging from pop-punk to Irish trad, the album looks to take prospective listeners across a whole radio’s worth of comedy songs, and Gordon is equally excited about the accompanying tour.
“I’ll be bringing a full band on tour with me in the spring, and it was like a weird pendulum where I recorded the album so that I could have full production and make the songs sound even more authentic to the genre, and now the live show is catching up to the album,” Gordon explains. “I think it’ll be fun for people who have not heard the songs, but I think almost more fun for people who might be familiar with the material because you can see it in this high-energy, full-band setting.”
With a new single, “My Life (Is The Worst Life Ever),” which dropped on January 23rd, Gordon is looking forward to producing more songs and characters in 2024, adding to his deep bag of faces and disguises from which you might know him. “What gives me forward momentum and the drive to keep doing it is always creating new stuff, which I think is a good impulse. I’m already starting to get excited about making a second album in the future, but I might be getting out over my skis,” Gordon shares. Presumably, whether in swing or R&B, folk or funk, we will hear more songs that feel immediately familiar while also seeming like they are beamed in from another planet (Bass or otherwise).