Comedy and
music have always co-existed – but with artists from Dry Cleaning to Bo Burnham cleverly blurring the two, it’s hard to tell where the jokes begin and end
![Collapsed laughing: how the gap between music and comedy has disappeared](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2393ba10c1a8f2aa9f0967a90de07ed9bfed6eda/0_0_2560_1536/master/2560.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=7d2a9677c24acefc5ba007307e8edfb1)
Some of my favourite music of this year was made by a comedian, and some of my favourite
comedy by musicians. The comedian is Bo Burnham, whose
Netflix standup special Inside was built around a series of songs satirising online life that were nuanced and sophisticated enough to completely transcend their comedy context. The accompanying album reached No 5 in the
UK charts. The musicians are Dry Cleaning, a
London post-punk outfit fronted by Florence Shaw, whose droll sprechgesang resembles left-field standup, her monologues filled with surrealism, sarcasm, offbeat observations and dialogue that brings to mind Victoria Wood or Alan Bennett. “I’m just sad about the collapse of heavy industry / I’ll be alright in a bit,” goes recent single Tony Speaks!.
These two examples are not outliers: it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell comedy-music and music-music apart. Earlier this month, spoof pirate radio crew Kurupt FM – the team behind the
BBC sitcom People Just Do Nothing – released their debut album, The Greatest Hits (Part 1). They may be steeped in UK garage nostalgia but these songs are more than just punchlines – and many were made with serious collaborators (D Double E, Sir Spyro, Mist, Chase and Status). Plus, Kurupt FM have a background in music rather than comedy: they did actually do pirate radio for real initially, and Hugo Chegwin, who plays the credulous Beats, has worked as a songwriter for Sam Smith and Tinie Tempah. The crew also have a successful club night. The trend continues with Bad Boy Chiller Crew, the
Social Media jokers who recently began making bassline, and are now a serious proposition – in both the big-time and not particularly funny senses.