{"id":1036401,"date":"2022-11-09T17:52:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T14:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1036401"},"modified":"2022-11-09T17:52:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T14:52:33","slug":"what-comedian-songwriter-whitmer-thomas-is-listening-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1036401","title":{"rendered":"What Comedian-Songwriter Whitmer Thomas Is Listening To"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What Comedian-Songwriter Whitmer Thomas Is Listening To<\/h1>\n
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On the heels of his new album, Thomas talks about his love of skate video soundtracks and the Ween song he wishes he\u2019d written.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Quinn Moreland<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Image by Callum Abbott, photo by Gary Gershoff\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As a teenager in Gulf Shores, Alabama, comedian and songwriter Whitmer Thomas had aggressively unsubtle musical taste: \u201cI would always go for the most emo of emo, the heaviest hardcore, and the most train-hopping folk stuff.\u201d His interest in extremes carried over to the music he made with his friends. \u201cWe were a hardcore metal band that played joke songs. People would fight all the time at our shows,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople would come from the Air Force base for a drink, see people moshing, and then start a fight.\u201d Speaking over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles, Thomas laughs as he remembers one altercation in which his glasses were punched off his face\u2014\u201clike a total nerd\u201d\u2014which resulted in his banishment from a local vegan punk venue.<\/p>\n

Thomas, now 33, moved to Los Angeles at 18 to pursue a career in show biz, eventually landing roles in shows like Glow<\/em> and co-creating a semi-biographical animated series called Stone Quackers<\/em>. Along the way, he began working on a set of material exploring his childhood that eventually became the 2020 HBO standup special The Golden One<\/em>. Filmed at the Flora-Bama Lounge, a beachside bar where Thomas\u2019 late mother and her twin sister served as the house band, the show deals with questions of artistic ambition, addiction, and family through a mix of music and stand-up.<\/p>\n

Comedy and songwriting have long been tied together for Thomas, and the release of The Golden One<\/em>, paired with the forced pause of the pandemic, led him to reevaluate his approach to both. He describes his latest releases, March\u2019s Can\u2019t Believe You\u2019re Happy Here<\/em> EP and last month\u2019s The Older I Get the Funnier I Was<\/em>, as attempts to reconnect with a less \u201caggressively comedic\u201d songwriting voice. Working alongside producer Melina Duterte (Jay Som), Thomas sings about all-consuming modern malaise (\u201cRigamarole\u201d), people-pleasing tendencies (\u201cMost Likely\u201d), and his own daddy issues (\u201cSouth Florida\u201d).<\/p>\n

In retrospect, Thomas wonders whether some of these admissions are \u201ctoo personal.\u201d But, as he sings on the aptly titled \u201cNavel Gazey\u201d: \u201cGotta commit to the cringe.\u201d \u201cI always joke that as soon as I leave a room, I regret whatever I just did inside,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not a proud guy, and I\u2019m not precious about stuff. I probably should be, but the comedian in me won\u2019t allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Thomas still cherishes music as deeply as he did as a teenager, though his taste may have evolved a bit. Here are four songs he’s been listening to lately.<\/p>\n

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Space Kuma: \u201cUniverses\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Whitmer Thomas: My friend Marshall Vore posted this to his Instagram story. It\u2019s a little child singing and playing guitar and then they do this arpeggiated synthesizer thing. It\u2019s the most beautiful and heartbreaking little song. This is the only song on the project\u2019s Spotify page. I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s a band or a person. I listen to it all the time, every day, and it continues to blow me away. I will usually listen to every song that I see somebody post, unless it\u2019s like, Beyonc\u00e9, or something that is probably getting enough love. I always think it\u2019s funny when people are like, \u201cSee Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>!\u201d You don\u2019t need to post that. Plenty of people are watching.<\/p>\n

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genny!: \u201cTHANKYOU\u201d [ft. 454]<\/h2>\n
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I also find a lot of music through skate videos. Skating is so special to me, hanging out and discovering new tricks or whatever with your pals. This song by genny! comes on at the end of a skate video called \u201cMuch Needed After a Long.\u201d It\u2019s just a pitched up vocal sample of somebody singing \u201cThank you, thank you, thank you,\u201d but there\u2019s something very nostalgic and innocent about it. I have a playlist on Spotify called \u201cMissing My Homies\u201d and this fits perfectly into that camp.<\/p>\n

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Ween: \u201cBaby Bitch\u201d<\/h2>\n
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There are a lot of songs that I am jealous of as a comedian and songwriter. Ween\u2019s \u201cBaby Bitch\u201d is one of them. It\u2019s a beautiful chorus: \u201cBaby bitch\/I\u2019m better now, please fuck off.\u201d In my mind, if I was doing standup and I sang that song, it would be to myself, and it would get a good laugh. There\u2019s a lot of great artists where I’m like, if you told 10 minutes of jokes right before you sang that song, people would laugh throughout the whole thing. If somebody asked if I would rather have a million dollars or have written \u201cBaby Bitch,\u201d I\u2019d choose \u201cBaby Bitch.\u201d Also, I obviously like baby stuff, \u201cBig Baby,\u201d all that stuff.<\/p>\n

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Purple Mountains: \u201cAll My Happiness Is Gone\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Purple Mountains\u2019 self-titled album is the most inspiring music, and obviously comes from such a pure place. If you want to make a comedy song, remove all metaphors and vague descriptions, and you\u2019ll have one because it will be so blunt. David Berman is a perfect example, probably my favorite comedian. Jeffrey Lewis, who did a great eulogy for David Berman, is another guy who does a great job with that. He has a song called \u201cDon\u2019t Be Upset\u201d that I am also very jealous of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/what-comedian-songwriter-whitmer-thomas-is-listening-to\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns What Comedian-Songwriter Whitmer Thomas Is Listening To On the heels of his new album, Thomas talks about his love of skate video soundtracks and the Ween song he wishes he\u2019d written. By Quinn Moreland November 9, 2022 Image by Callum Abbott, photo by Gary Gershoff\/Getty Images As a teenager in Gulf Shores, Alabama, comedian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1036402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1036401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1036401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1036401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1036401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1036401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}