In a rare live appearance Wednesday night, Bo Burnham joined Phoebe Bridgers on stage at the Largo at the Coronet for the first-ever live performance of “That Funny Feeling.” Show Both Burnham and Bridgers were surprise special guests at Pete Holmes’ monthly “Living at Largo” show. Bridgers came out first with Marshall Vore and Harrison Whitford for an acoustic version of “Motion Sickness” before leading into a solo performance of “Moon Song.” “I’m gonna play a song I wish I wrote,” Bridgers said to the audience of 280 people. “I know I love something when it fills me with rage.” Then the singer-songwriter motioned off-stage, and Burnham came out and sat down at a keyboard. The intimate audience went nuts as Bridgers and her bandmates waded into a delicate rendition of Burnham’s flagship acoustic song from “Inside.” With Bridgers taking the lead, Burnham contributed overlaying keyboard chords and subtle vocal harmonies. After the song’s bridge, “Hey, what can you say? / We were overdue / But it’ll be over soon / Just wait,” Whitford delivered a folksy guitar solo. Unfortunately for fans who weren’t in attendance, the Largo’s strict policy against recording and cell phones means there will likely not be a video of the performance. As Bridgers and Co. left the stage, Burnham performed a song he’s done over the years at the Largo about a chicken crossing the road. Holmes opened the show with a short stand-up set, followed by Emily Catalano and Robin Tran. “It’s not the movie, it’s the drive to the movie,” Holmes said before inviting Bridgers on stage, implying that the audience’s anticipation for the surprise is more exciting than the surprise itself. But at the very end of the show, Holmes came back out with a big smile on his face and said, “Sometimes it is the movie!” Burnham and Bridgers were spotted eating lunch together in early July, perhaps foreshadowing the collab, weeks after Bridgers posted “That Funny Feeling” on her Instagram Story with the caption, “every bone in my body wants to plagiarize this.” Watch Bridgers’ performance of “Motion Sickness” and “Moon Song” below. Read More About:
Bo vs. Phoebe. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Netflix and Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images Bo Burnham released Insideon Netflix in May, exploded hearts and minds and eyeballs around the nation, then stayed mostly quiet. There was a “Here is the album” here, a cryptic photo of himself there. He still hasn’t seemed to shave. What lingered were questions: What was Inside really about? Was Bo okay? Was it “real”? People got to talking and speculating and Always-Sunny-Pepe-Silvia-memeing. Still, nothing, raising yet another question: What does Burnham think of all this? What does he think about our reaction? But here’s someone saying they saw Burnham and Phoebe Bridgers getting lunch. Now there’s a photo. Now Bridgers is covering “That Funny Feeling” at a Pete Holmes show in L.A., with Burnham backing her up on keys. Now she’s covering it at one of her own shows. And another. Now she’s releasing a cover of the song as a dang single with the proceeds going to Texas abortion funds. With it being Burnham and Bridgers — two protagonists in the discourse, as well as two, you know, brilliant, thoughtful artists — I couldn’t help but wonder (this blog post is the real Sex and the City reboot): What are they trying to say? I have some questions. What is Bridgers covering
Burnham’s “That Funny Feeling” communicating about Burnham? Having Bridgers, of “When a machine keeps me alive / And I’m losing all my hair / I hope you kiss my rotten head / And pull the plug” fame, cover your song seems to imply the latter. The sweet little kiddies with their great big hearts were right to hear “That Funny Feeling” and think I felt that. If it was meant to be funny, wouldn’t it have been covered by “Weird Al” Yankovic and not “Sad Phoebe” Bridgers? Her whole thing is being sad. She’s like Phoebe from Friends but the freaking opposite! And maybe she has to cover the song live because Burnham is still too sad to do it himself!!! At that Pete Holmes show, Bridgers introduced “That Funny Feeling” by saying “I’m gonna play a song I wish I wrote.” Considering the songs Bridgers writes tend to be devastating, plain-spoken contemporary alt-folk music, it stands to reason that she is saying this song is also an example of that. How neatly would it fit in a songbook with “And when I grow up, I’m gonna look up / From my phone and see my life”? Was that what that lunch with Burnham was all about? He wanted to be taken seriously, and so to communicate this song was serious, he asked Phoebe to cover it? Maybe the people who tweeted “Inside isn’t a comedy special, it’s so much more” were right. What is Bridgers covering
Burnham’s “That Funny Feeling” communicating about Bridgers? So, what if, when Bridgers said she wished she wrote “That Funny Feeling,” she meant she wished she was able to write something that is actually comedic? Not like small nose-exhale, silent-nod comedy, but you know, comedy. More specifically, she wanted to puncture the balloon that is inflated every time she needs to play the part of Phoebe Bridgers. Am I saying Phoebe Bridgers is a lie? No, I’m saying she’s a liar. And she has to be! Think about what her audience expects from her. I’m sure when she wrote “Kyoto,” it was out of an earnest reflection on her relationship with her estranged father, where the isolation of being in a foreign country was meant to mirror disconnection caused by an abusive, alcoholic parent. But can you imagine having to perform this experience every night for people who are paying you to give them some sort of catharsis? I bet Bo Burnham can. As he sings in the Make Happy closer from 2016, “Can’t Handle This”: “Come and watch the skinny kid with a / Steadily declining mental health, and laugh as he attempts / To give you what he cannot give himself.” What if this is what they talked about at that lunch? Maybe Bridgers asked Burnham, “How can I communicate what I need to about the inherent loneliness of contemporary life without being taken so seriously?” Is being funny a way to break the tension of the weight of emotional expectation created for her performances and allow her to connect with her audience more directly? That feeling is, well, funny. Can’t it be
both? You know the fable about boiling a frog? You can’t just put it in boiling water, because it will jump out. Instead you put it in at room temperature and slowly turn up the heat. For at least very sensitive millennials, that’s what living on the internet feels like — slowly your sense of “normal” gets obscured, and previously uncomplicated everyday relationships feel complicated and foreign. Even before the pandemic, the observation that we’ve never been more connected yet disconnected felt trite, and then, as Burnham says near the end of Inside, “the funniest thing happened.” The song, their collaboration, works as a fine allegory for what many people are currently going through right now: trying to rebuild genuine connection, one person at a time. Or not? Like everyone discussed in this blog post, my brain has been absolutely pulverized by the internet, so I just have questions and a compulsive need to speculate. Is this song a joke? I don’t know. Maybe, but, either way, it’s on us. Anyway, here’s that cover: Some Questions About Phoebe Bridgers’s Bo Burnham CoverDid Phoebe Bridgers cover Bo Burnham?Phoebe Bridgers Drops` Bo Burnham 'That Funny Feeling' Cover.
Why did Phoebe Bridgers cover that funny feeling?Phoebe Bridgers drops cover of Bo Burnham's 'That Funny Feeling' to benefit Texas abortion funds.
What is Phoebe Bridgers most famous song?1. "Motion Sickness" Phoebe's most critically and commercially successful song - as well as her most unflinchingly vulnerable and personal track to date.
Did Phoebe Bridgers wrote that funny feeling?Bo Burnham
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