Kyle Gordon was doing just fine before “Planet of the Bass” took over the world.
The comedian built a substantial fan base performing stand-up to sold-out venues across the country — and had an even bigger audience on social media, with bountiful follower counts on TikTok and Instagram. Even Nick Jonas followed Gordon. (This intel will pay off later.)
Then, as his character DJ Crazy Times and with an assist from Ms. Biljana Electronica, he dropped “Bass,” the infectious ’90s Eurodance parody with blissfully nonsensical broken English lyrics (“Take your heart into a unicorn,” “When the rhythm is glad, there is nothing to be sad,” “Women are my favorite guys”) that simultaneously celebrated and lampooned the once-ubiquitous sounds of since-forgotten acts like Real McCoy (“Another Night”), Haddaway (“What Is Love”) and La Bouche (“Be My Lover”). “Bass” not only taps into the genre’s time-capsule techno-pop, but the track deftly straddles earnestness and eroticism, with Crazy Times segueing from a virtuous plea for world peace to an awkward phone sex reenactment.
Initially released as a series of TikTok videos (each featuring a different actress as the featured vocalist — a parody within a parody, poking fun at groups that hired models to play their singers), “Planet of the Bass” became an instant hit with Gordon’s sizable base.
But it kept spreading and spreading, racking up 250 million views and being — perhaps even unironically —hailed as “the song of the summer.” (Seriously, are there any other contenders?) The vaunted New York Times even took time to explain the phenomenon of “Bass” to its readers, and that was before Gordon released the fully produced, full-length video on YouTube on Aug. 15. The viral parody became an actual hit, debuting at No. 46 on Billboard’s dance/electronic chart with 736,000 streams in the U.S.
“I was happy with the song, I thought it was really fun and funny, but I was completely blown away by how massive it became,” the Westchester, N.Y., native and Brooklyn resident, who created the character of DJ Crazy Times while in college, tells Yahoo Entertainment via Zoom from Hawaii, where he’s about to run his first marathon. “It’s changed my life. I did have a large following on social media already before the song came out. … But this expanded my reach, and it’s a different beast when the press starts caring about the stuff you’re doing.
“Maybe I’m not fully sure how that’s going to manifest in my life. But we’re in a different ball game now, and I’m still figuring out exactly what that means. But yeah, I think it has changed a lot.”
The comedian-turned-unlikely pop star will soon release a full album of parody songs, Kyle Gordon Is Great, on Nov. 10. “This is just the first single,” he explains. “Each song on the album will be a parody of a different genre, and every other song on the album is a fully produced version of a song that I’ve been playing live for years. So I’m very excited to sort of share all this stuff that I’ve been doing for so long. But there’s a parody of ’60s bossanova. There’s a early-2000s Shania Twain girl-boss country song. There’s a pop-punk emo song. So there’s a lot of musical diversity on it.”
Here are three burning questions Gordon answered for us as “Planet of the Bass” continues sweeping the globe.
1. What were the main influences for “Planet of the Bass”?
It definitely comes from a genuine love and absolute fascination with the genre. I grew up as a child of the ’90s listening to a lot of this music. But it would only ever come through on American pop radio in dribs and drabs because amid all the American teen pop and new metal rock music every once in a while you’d hear “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” [from Eiffel 65] or Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” And whenever it would come through, it sounded nothing like anything else on the radio, which I think initially piqued my interest. And then as I got older, I got more into the music, and it’s so fun and the lyrics are so strange and the themes are so specific, very sexual, a lot of discussion of technology that now sounds very outdated, and like a fascination with space. And so all those very specific themes and very specific tropes, I love them, but it also makes them ripe for parody.
There’s a bunch [of songs that inspired it], and I have an official DJ Crazy Times playlist that you can find on Spotify [embedded below]. … Obviously “Blu (Da Ba Dee)” and “Barbie Girl” as I mentioned, but there are some deep cuts. I definitely make a direct allusion to this song “Sex on the Phone” by a German group called E-rotic. All of their songs are insane. “Sex on the Phone,” “Max Don’t Have Sex With Your Ex,” “Fritz Love My Tits.” These are all actual titles of songs. There’s another song called “Space Invaders” by a group called Hit N’ Hide. And their music video really was one of the big influences on the [“Planet of the Bass”] music video and that space theme. And then there’s another group called 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor, which is just such an insane European name for a group, and they have a lot of crazy space music videos and their music is right in the wheelhouse of this genre. So those are some big influences. … “What Is Love,” for sure is in there. And Real McCoy “Another Night.” That’s definitely in there, too.
2. What’s been the most surreal moment since “Planet of the Bass” went viral?
I think the obvious answer has to be when the Jonas Brothers brought me on stage in front of 20,000 people [at Boston’s TD Garden]. I mean, surreal is the only way to describe it, because before then, the largest crowd I had performed in front of was 400 people. And so to go out in front of 20,000 people on a massive stage where the Celtics play, the way I describe it is I played pretend like rockstar like I’m 8 years old. Like it was not even real to me.
As I was flying back from Columbus, aka Bratislava, from shooting the music video, Nick Jonas DM’ed me because he had actually been following me on TikTok for a few years. And so he DM’ed me and was like, ‘What are you up to?’ I think their initial plan was to have me go out at their Yankee Stadium show, but I was flying back from Ohio, so it worked out that I drove up to Boston. Literally, the song came out that day at noon and we left and immediately drove up to Boston for the show. … It’s funny, I have a text thread with Nick, Joe and Kevin on my phone. It’s so funny showing people that. But yeah, the time between when I knew I was going to actually perform with them and when I actually got on stage was less than 24 hours.
3. Are you worried you might be a one-hit wonder like many of the groups you parodied? Or would it be the ultimate commitment to the bit?
I mean, yeah, just to have this song be a hit is so bananas that if it’s a one-hit wonder, that would be the funniest thing ever. I would not be upset at all. Hopefully other people get behind the other songs on the album, but if I go down as a one-hit wonder, that’s so hilarious. Also, music is very much a vessel for me to transmit comedy and funny ideas. So, yeah, I definitely don’t think of myself as a musician in that sense. So to have a hit generally is just again hilarious. … I should actively sabotage the other songs just to make sure I have only one hit.
