Bo Burnam: White Woman’s Instagram
This is a song buy musical/comic star Bo Burnam. Bo Burnam is a comedian who often (and today almost exclusively) uses music to tell jokes. Burnam’s bits are often delivered in the form of a song. He got popular in the late 2000s/ early 2010s and for a while disappeared from the music and comedy scene. This song is from his movie/comedy special “Inside” and has taken off on the internet.
Burnam’s entire show and the accompanying album is about the internet, which is very fitting since it was created during the early stages of the pandemic when everything was locked down. As Burnam points out, being ‘inside’ made us all dive deeper into the internet than before. This song in particular is making fun of white women and their overly aesthetic instagram feeds. Burnam goes on to list many things that can be found on white women’s instagram, including but not limited to; “Latte foam art, tiny pumpkins, Fuzzy, comfy socks, Coffee table made out of driftwood, A bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, A needlepoint of a fox, Some random quote from Lord of the Rings incorrectly attributed to Martin Luther King”. Burnam is exploiting a stereotype he finds amusing in this song and it is a smash hit on the internet. While he positions a large swath of us as frivolous, sentimental, and a little oblivious, white women love this song too. Some have even taken to instagram reels and Tik-Tok, comparing their own feeds to Burnam’s song to the great amusement of all.
Burnam produces, writes, and mixes all of his own songs. He used to perform them live in person when he did comedy skits. He does use real instruments like piano and occasionally guitar, but a lot of his music is electronic as well. The percussion in this song sounds very much like a drum machine, with its crisp and uniform sounds. There’s also some actual piano as well as synth. Interestingly enough in “Inside” Burnam records himself performing and recording the songs, so some of the production and the equipment used is visible to the viewer. The song itself is very upbeat with a good tempo. It sounds bright, clean, and has a sort of introspective quality to it. It almost has a singer songwriter quality to it mimus the synthetic sounds. This piece much more closely resembles the typical “song” structure, than some of his other pieces which are much more experimental and feel more like comedy skits than pieces of music. This, however, sounds like it could be played on the radio, and if you didn’t listen too closely you would never know it was from a comedy special.