Boburnham

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Robert Pickering "Bo" Burnham (born: August 21, 1990 (1990-08-21) [age 34]) is an American singer, songwriter, actor and Internet celebrity. Writing comedic and satirical songs with a politically incorrect slant, Burnham's YouTube videos have received over 41.6 million hits and his first EP—Bo Fo Sho—was released in June 2008 by Comedy Central Records, and his first full-length self-titled album was released by the same label in March 2009. Bo Burnham currently has over 3.7 million subscribers and 900 million video views as of February 2025.

Personal life

Bo Burnham was born the youngest of three in August 1990 to Patricia and Scott Burnham.

In February 2008, Patricia was a nurse at her youngest's school, and Scott owned a North Shore, Massachusetts construction company. Their two older children, Pete and Samm, were concurrently enrolled in their third and second years at Cornell University and Suffolk University Law School.

Bo attended the all-boys Catholic school, St. John's Preparatory School Danvers, Massachusetts; there he was on the school honor roll and involved in theatre and the campus ministry program. The school's assistant principal, Wendy Olson, remarked in a February 2008 interview that while "[t]he Bo on YouTube is not the Bo we see around here, [...] no one at St. John's is surprised at his creativity or that he's pursuing his dream, which is to make a name for himself." Burnham graduated from St. Johns in Spring of 2008.

Burnham applied to New York University (NYU), University of Southern California (USC), and Yale University, and was accepted to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Bo was in a relationship with American filmmaker Lorene Scafaria from 2013 until 2022.^[1][2][3]

Home-grown music

Burnham was performing skits ("Bo Shows") in his home by age three and grew up listening to boomer-generation comedians like George Carlin and Richard Pryor.

As detailed by Burnham himself, 2006 was the beginning of what would become his musical comedy career. Rehearsing a play at St. John's that summer, Burnham began writing songs about teenage angst and debuting them to his fellow high school thespians.

He then videotaped himself performing two songs and posted them to YouTube in December 2006, so that his older brother Pete could watch them from college. While the response to his videos on YouTube ("My Whole Family... " and "My 'little' secret...") was initially unexceptional, when they were copied to Break.com they became an overnight sensation, with traffic to his videos multiplying over 111 times.

Accompanying himself on guitar or electric piano, Burnham continued to release self-described "pubescent musical comedy" songs and videos online as his fame and recognition grew. Described by The Boston Globes Joseph P. Kahn as "simultaneously wholesome and disturbing, intimate in a folksy-creepy sort of way," Burnham wrote and released R-rated songs about white supremacy, Helen Keller's disabilities, homosexuality, and more.

All of Burnham's home-released videos were self-recorded in and around his family's home in Hamilton, Massachusetts, most in his bedroom. Occasionally jokingly addressing his audience in his videos, ("Hello, Internet pedophiles,") Burnham rarely changed facial expression or camera angle while performing—simply setting the video camera on a stack of books.

In Autumn 2007, Douglas Edley, talent agent from The Gersh Agency had Burnham recommended to him by his assistant. The next day Edley called Burnham and told him: "I gotta represent you." said Edley in a February 2008 telephone interview: "He's definitely the youngest comedian I've worked with – he was getting ready for his SATs when I called – but the quality of his writing is amazing." It was this call from Edley—whom Burnham had initially thought to be "a very advanced Internet predator"—that was Burnham's wake-up call as to his potential professional success. In addition to Burnham, Edley also represents several top-tier comedians, including Drew Carey and Dave Chappelle.

Career

Compared to Ben Folds, Eminem and Andrew Dice Clay, Burnham's music and performances tackle such taboo subjects as race, gender, human sexuality, and sex. Represented by Douglas Edley, Burnham recorded a performance in London for Comedy Central's The World Stands Up in January 2008 and signed a four-record deal with Comedy Central Records. Comedy Central Records released Burnham's first EP, the six-song Bo Fo Sho, as an online release-only album on. Burnham's first full album, the eponymous Bo Burnham, was released by Comedy Central Records.

In 2010, Burnham performed the comedy special Words, Words, Words, and the album was released onto several music streaming services in October 2010. In addition, he also uploaded a studio version of the opening song onto his YouTube channel in September of 2010 ("words, words, words.").

In December 2013, the comedy special what. was released on Burnham's YouTube channel for free, alongside becoming available on Netflix and music platforms. Notably, his book Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone, was released a few months prior to the special. He advertises it during the taped version, and in the track Poems, he reads a few samples of poems the book contains out loud. what. was also around the time in which Burnham's panic attacks started, as he stated that they started in 2013 when he had his first panic attack on stage.^[4]

Make Happy was implied to be Burnham's last comedy special, as his panic attacks became more frequent. In 2016, the show was released onto Netflix. Unlike his previous ones, the music is not available on music apps. However, he did upload "Can't Handle This (Kanye Rant)" to his YouTube channel.

Burnham did not produce another special for five years, until he wrote, filmed, and produced INSIDE during the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing it in June 2021 onto Netflix. Originally, Burnham had thought about going back to doing live comedy in January of 2020, before the pandemic hit and he was unable to due to quarantine.^[5] Several of the songs from the album made it to mainstream, such as Welcome to the Internet, Bezos I, Look Who's Inside Again, and 1985. The latter is from a compilation of unused shots from INSIDE, titled THE INSIDE OUTTAKES, which was released in 2022 on both Netflix and Burnham's YouTube channel.

Burnham has performed his music across the world, as well as the United States, including Cobb's Comedy Club and YouTube Live in San Francisco, London, Montreal, and Carolines Comedy Club in New York City. Burnham describes his on-stage persona as a "more arrogant, stuck-up version [of] himself".

Film

In 2009, he played Rudy in American Virgin. In 2012, he played Tony in Adventures in the Sin Bin. In 2013, he played Zach Stone in Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous. In 2015, he played Diz on the Kroll Show. In 2017, he played CJ in The Big Sick and also played Tobey in Rough Night. Burnham played the character Ryan Copper in the 2020 film Promising Young Woman.^[6]

While performing at the prestigious Montreal Just for Laughs festival in 2008, Burnham met with the award-winning director and producer Judd Apatow. That September, Burnham negotiated with Universal Pictures to write and create the music for an Apatow-produced comedy film which he describes as the "anti-High School Musical". interview with Boston's Weekly Dig, Burnham elaborated on his work with the film. When he isn't performing, the musician spends eight hours a day writing the music, and his nights writing the script, of which he's finished the first draft.

Trivia

• Bo is politically left-leaning.
• He is an Atheist.
• He dislikes Podcasts.^[7]

References

Attribution

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