NEM#241: Humor in Music w/ Don Rauf, David Heatley, and Dave Philpott

About this episode

Mark discusses the role of humor in music with three guests, exploring whether funny music can be emotionally sincere.

Mark is joined by returning NEM guest Don Rauf (singer/songwriter from Life In a Blender ), singer/songwriter/cartoonist David Heatley (featured on Mark’s other show Pretty Much Pop ), and writer/musician Dave “Diggy” Dawson aka Dave Philpott (featured talking about his letters-to-popstars books on Pretty Much Pop ). Our topic is humor in music. Is funny music necessarily less sincerely emotional, and so a failure at what music is supposed to do? People are used to hearing songs from the singer’s perspective and might not realize that you’re playing a satirical character. How seriously do rock stars take their various ridiculous personas? An extreme persona can enable you to express something more interesting than a straight emotional recitation. Homages to various nostalgic styles (e.g. disco, metal, ’80s syntho) can in effect be musical jokes of a sort, but don’t have to imply that you’re laughing at that style (pretending to display an aesthetic is identical to actually displaying that aesthetic, your ambivalent intentions notwithstanding). You can choose to watch this whole discussion unedited on YouTube , though you will in…

People in this episode

Guests: Don Rauf, David Heatley, Dave Philpott

Topics covered

• humor in music
• satire
• emotional sincerity

Keywords

• music
• interviews
• comedy
• songwriting

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Surfshark VPN

Books & works: Life In a Blender, Pretty Much Pop, Life in a Blender’s, My Heart Your Sweat Does Feed, Blowing Off the World ”, They Might Be Giants, Haunted Heart, Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter, Ice Cream Man, Baby Got Back

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