Life
Meet Kyle Gordon, the Jewish comedian behind the 'song of the summer'
The stand-up from New York has big plans after the viral success of Planet of the Bass
August 16, 2023 12:55
The stand-up from New York has big plans after the viral success of Planet of the Bass
August 16, 2023 12:55Kyle Gordon is an unlikely pop sensation. The 30-year-old comedian from Brooklyn doesn't fit the bill of the sort of person you'd expect to be behind an Eastern European-style Eurodance banger.
But Gordon's song, Planet of the Bass, a song he describes as 'a decade in the making' has taken over social media before it's even been officially released.
Amassing over 105m views in the weeks since it was published, a promo clip for Planet of the Bass has been called the 'song of the summer', and sparked thousands of memes and a healthy dollop of Twitter discourse to boot.
Gordon, who was raised in a Conservative Jewish (similar to Masorti) home, spoke to the JC from an 'undisclosed location' where he was shooting the music video for his hit song.
— Kyle Gordon (@kylegordon101) July 28, 2023
But the road to viral fame hasn't been short, or easy. Gordon said: "So I've been doing comedy since 2014. So I started off doing improv in New York and then I kind of switched to like sort of a solo character musical-based live thing.
"My parents were great. Like they weren't There was never a moment where they were like, Go for to pursue your dream. But they were never down on the idea. but at times, They were like, so how long is it gonna be?
"And then I started doing, you know, social media comedy content. Like a lot of people during the pandemic. So the first video I really posted was in November 2020."
British Food: pic.twitter.com/IEk0PUdKfn
— Kyle Gordon (@kylegordon101) July 26, 2022
Since then he's made a name for himself parodying everything from British food, to Christian evangelical influencers, amassing millions of followers on TikTok.
Jewish Food: pic.twitter.com/qKA0M0lKAy
— Kyle Gordon (@kylegordon101) March 9, 2023
In a particularly memorable clip, he takes on a shtetl-ish accent and costume to make fun of gefilte fish and other Jewish classics, making fun of his own "very Ashkenazi" background.
When it comes to his new hit song, Gordan said: "My biggest inspiration is Christopher Guest. So if, you know, like Spinal Tap, he did these like really very accurate like pitch perfect sort of parodies of those genres.
"That was really a big inspiration for me. And so I kind of took that and made it maybe a little more cartoony and a little sillier."
DJ Crazy Time, the character behind the song isn't new to Gordon either. Kyle said: "I've been doing the character DJ Crazy Tme since college and there's actually a recording of me in 2013 doing ad-libs as DJ Crazy Time."
In 2023, a viral hit can't be left unexamined and the success of the song has sparked heated discussion on Twitter, most of it centring around Gordon's decision to reshoot the promo video with a rotating cast of female talent.
There's been much speculation as to why the character of 'Biljana Electronica' has been played by three different female actors. The original Biljana, Audrey Trullinger, told the Washington Post that she found all the furore hilarious, but some fans speculated there was something fishy going on.
But Kyle says there's a simple explanation.
"My thinking originally was you know I was going to put out the promo content to get people excited about the song and there was going to be this three or so weeks between that when the song came out.
"And so I was like, How do I come up with some interesting promo content for the song? And I thought it would be funny to do, that early nineties euro dance thing where they would have an original singer sing the track and then they would just get a random model to be in the video.
"So I was like, Why don't I turn that up to 11 and get a different actress in the video each time and the reaction has been hilarious and amazing."
When asked if there were more Biljanas to come, Kyle remains tight-lipped.
He refused to comment on what's coming next but said: "We're going to start shooting the official music video tomorrow. And so I think there's going to be some very fun elements and surprises for people in the official music video."
But does he have a favourite Biljana?
"They're like the Powerpuff Girls to me, you know, I can't, I can't pick."
Brooks Allison: Producer
Jamie Siegel: Mixed and Engineered the song
Chrissi Poland: Singer
Sam Gordon: Filmed the original Planet of the Bass promo video