Not Great
According to my Spotify Wrapped, my most listened-to artist for the second year in a row was Bo Burnham.
Content note: suicide mention
According to my Spotify Wrapped, my most listened-to artist for the second year in a row was Bo Burnham. First a YouTuber, then a highly sought-after IRL musical comedian, then a film director-slash-actor, Burnham's 2021 addition to the zeitgeist was Inside, the stand-up-comedy-special-question-mark? about mental health, growing up on the internet, and the performativity involved in straddling those experiences.
I tell people, first and foremost, that Burnham is about two weeks younger than me. So not only have I been familiar with his work since I was (since we were both) in high school, but I have also formed a light yet sometimes embarrassing parasocial attachment to someone who I already feel like I can relate to, his work aside.
From Burnham's "30":
I used to be the young one, got used to meeting people
Who weren't used to meeting someone who was born in 1990
No way! (Yeah, I was born in 1990)
Now I'm turning thirty
God, God damn it!
As someone who (reminder: we both) turned 30 near the onset of a raging global pandemic, the pseudo-event of a Massive Life Change upon completing a third decade of being alive was either elevated by the state of the world or it was muted by it. Either we can have our separate crises about turning 30, an age where truly not much happens except that you're no longer eligible to make the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, or we can accept that life goes on in spite of ourselves.
Oh, fuck, how am I 30?
Inside was released in May 2021, around nine months after I'd (we'd) turned 30, yet the 38 times Burnham repeats some variation of "I'm turning 30" made it feel as fresh to me as it did on my 30th birthday. It was my 24th most listened-to song of 2021 (and my third-most listened-to on the album, though I think this order was more based on the other songs' proximity to the top of the track listing rather than outright preference), and for what reason? Because I was also 30 for a small amount of time after I first heard it? Or because at the end of "30," Burnham goes,
It's 2020, and I'm 30, I'll do another ten
2030, I'll be 40 and kill myself then
and on my 30th birthday, I had written a blog post called "30" where I said,
When I was in high school, in the throes of undiagnosed depression, I decided I probably wouldn’t make it to 30. (The only reason 20 was in the picture was because I knew I had to finish college.)
and there's this overwhelming feeling of decades defining our lives, how we exist between them but don't live them, so saying "I'll simply die before I'm 30" or "I'll kill myself at 40" is a proclamation that feels so profound in the moment but only makes sense if you ignore the years that don't end in zero and everything they could bring?
The reason I listen to so much goddamn Bo Burnham is that I want to know that someone else, anyone else, is feeling this way too. Even if it's in the past. Even if it's cloaked in a "performance." Because aren't we all performing all the time anyway? Aren't we faking well so people don't get uncomfortable seeing us be sick, clothespinning smiles onto our faces and adding exclamation points to emails, pretending the process of going through the day isn't going to kill us even though we're sure it will?
So when I hear a song like "All Time Low," a song about panic attacks that so dreadfully and brilliantly mirrors a panic attack that you only understand it's about panic attacks if you've had a panic attack, I'm not thinking about how I do not know this person. I'm thinking about my most recent panic attack, the overstimulation, the light sensitivity, the racing thoughts, the drama of it all, and I'm also thinking about how I'm not having a panic attack while I'm listening to this song, and how much better that particular existence is.