Review Summary: This barely counts as music.
I must start off this review by saying that I am not white, I did not study theater or English in college, and I am not a virgin. Perhaps I am not the target audience for Bo Burnham’s work. However as a neutral party who really did not know of Bo Burnham before my roommate introduced me to him this year I was promised a humorous yet sophisticated commentary on internet culture, which greatly peaked my interest. The one thing that my roommate failed to mention is that the music itself is ear-grating and fucking dogshit. This is hipster garbage meant for depressed white millennials who have nose piercings, tattoos with shitty line work, and caffeine addictions.
Since this is a music site and we review music here I will keep the discussion of the attached special to a minimum, yet it’s important to bring up for context. With Inside, Burnham presents a variety of sketches, skits, and musical performances spoofing both internet and quarantine culture. Burnham’s content here is entertaining and funny at times, but lets be honest its extremely shallow without any depth and surface level observations about society that a third grader could come up with. Almost every joke is “wah lockdowns suck and im depressed” or “ooooo the internet is a craaaaazy place”. Burham poorly contrasts wacky and deadpan humor with self-indulgent heavy-handed societal commentary. The subject matter similar to 2012 “random XD” humor but somehow even more grating and insulting since this pretends to be deep and complex when it’s really just incredibly surface level faux intellectualism. It doesn’t help that 90% of Burham’s jokes fall flat and obvious attempts at humor just result in me cringing in pain.
If you thought the surface level observations and the incredibly repetitive and grayscale humor that goes on far too long was grating enough, you’ll absolutely love the album. Songs like “White Women’s Instagram” are devoid of actual quality content, and while the reference to the woman’s dead mother was an interesting change of pace, Burnham fails to capitalize on it or make an actual point, per say. A lot of the material here similarly raises observations without providing deeper commentary. Songs like “shit” are kind of funny for the first 10 seconds but then just repeat the same joke for way too long. Most the material here is inoffensive and occasionally enjoyable, but is just fucking derivative and too short or one-dimensional to justify any of Burham’s arguments or observations.
The actual quality of the songs themselves are just awful. I bet Bo Burnham is a nice guy, even if he’s a dumb person pretending to be a smart person. Lets be real though the worst part about the album is easily the vocals. Bo's vocals are so embarrassingly dogshit and out of tune they just make a somewhat uninteresting and uneventful album a trainwreck. His rap voice is somewhat whiny and annoying. The main crime against humanity is his singing voice, which is incredibly cringy and dare I say ear-grating. Burnham has a very deep, almost opera-sounding timbre, which completely doesn’t fit with most of his beats. The heavy echo and reverb attached to his voice doesn’t do him any favors. This contrasts incredibly poorly for most of his instrumentals. Take “Besos I” for example. This song features an upbeat, quirky synthpop sound that is just absolutely slathered with this reverb-drenched singing by Burnham. It’s the musical equivalent of mixing two foods that dont go together at all. Or for college kids who know the game “king’s cup”, it’s the drink in the middle that contains a disgusting combination of cheap college beer, some wine, and hunter’s watermelon four loko. “All Eyes on Me” features some of the worst production I’ve heard in a song all year. The mixing is more rushed than the cover art (which is so low effort and uneventful i forgot what it looked like as i was listening to the album) and migraine-inducing EQ's that just make me regret ever being born. This album sucks and the few enjoyable jokes and skits are just lost in a sea of repetitive filler.
Bo Burnham thinks he’s a lot more clever than he actually is on Inside. And he thinks he can sing a lot better than he actually can. Burham is an absolute fucking melvin, he is like the 9th grader who raises his hand in his first debate class to try and argue why the government shouldn’t tax citizens then just stutters the same talking points that the kid before him said. Musically the quality is quite honestly garbage. The laughably bad production value makes you question if you are actually listening to music or just some alien or AI attempt to make music. I get that this was made in Burham’s house during COVID, and Burham likely did not have access to high quality recording equipment. However in the year 2021 it is very easy (relatively speaking) to record and mix decent vocals that don’t have headache-inducing frequencies. Burnham’s beats aren’t even that bad but his vocals are worse than wannabe artists like icejjfish or Unkle Adams. I have nothing against Burham personally, nor do I know the guy, nor do I want to know him. That being said I would bet 10 dollars that he came up with the idea of a quarantine themed album while high as balls and then made everything in one night. This album is barely a 1.5 it's not a 1 because it's rather inoffensive and there were a few times where I briefly laughed even if the joke ended up running for too long without any derivation. Bo Burnham sucks as an artist and should go back to the drawing board. I would say he should become a ghost writer but his writing sucks too. this is based and confirmed official.
