The Story Behind ‘Planet of the Bass,’ Kyle Gordon’s Eurodance Parody Sweeping the Internet
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Comedian Kyle Gordon’s ultra-catchy Eurodance parody, “Planet of the Bass,” gripped the internet before the song was even released. An initial teaser video in July, starring Gordon and Audrey Trullinger trotting across Manhattan’s Oculus mall, has since racked up over 100 million views on Twitter and nearly 100 million likes on TikTok.
But when Gordon released two more teaser videos — with two more women — people lost their minds. “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM,” one person wrote on Twitter after the second video dropped. “You thought you could just get another blonde girl??? Where’s my OG?” another user replied to the third video, featuring comedian Sabrina Brier.
“It’s completely bananas!” Gordon says of the internet uproar. “I filmed three teaser clips like a month ago. And obviously, I was very excited about all of them and about the song, but I did not expect the first one to go so crazy. The idea was always to release all three because you have the trope in Eurodance where they’ll get a real singer to sing the song and then they just put models and actresses in the music video. So I thought it’d be funny to have a different actress in each video.”
Still, Gordon, who created his “DJ Crazy Times” character 10 years ago, has a lot more than just Eurodance up his sleeve. “Planet of the Bass,” released in full on Aug. 15, is just one part of his full comedy music album set to release this fall. The 10-track album is filled with parodies of bossa nova, country radio hits, emo-coded pop songs and other genres lampooned by just him and his guitar.
Speaking with Variety, Gordon discusses his inspirations from Bo Burnham to “Spinal Tap’s” Christopher Guest, performing “Planet of the Bass” live in Bushwick and making his debut album.
How did you meet the girls in the videos? And how did you reach out to people in general to be a part of the project with you?
I wrote this track, and the demo was produced by my friend Brooks Allison, who’s a musician and a writer on “[The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy] Fallon.” Then it was mixed and engineered by the producer of my album, Jamie Siegel.
With Audrey [Trullinger], we just followed each other, and making the video was the first time we met. And she was a real trooper while everyone was staring at us in the Oculus. Awesome. And then the second actor, Mara, I met her at a content collaboration thing with Marshmello like a year and a half ago where I actually did DJ Crazy Times. And then the last girl, Sabrina Brier, I had seen her stuff online, but we literally met when a bunch of New York comedy people rented a house upstate and then I was like, “Do you want to be in this video?”
How did you come up with the lyric “women are my favorite guy?”
I think it came to me in a dream many years ago. And it’s just this phrase that’s been swimming around in my head. You know, it was sort of a religious experience, actually. So it just kind of flowed out of me. It really wasn’t me, it was sort of like a spirit that took over my body and wrote that for me.
For sure. So, what was your process for the rest of the album? Did you go back and research each genre that you parody?
The other tracks are pretty much all bits that I’ve been doing in my live act for a long time, so it’s just me and my guitar. They developed a lot more slowly, doing it live over many years.
Although I’ve been doing this character since like college — there’s actually a recording of me doing DJ Crazy Times on the intro track of my college a capella group’s CD from 2013 — “Planet of the Bass” was the only song that was written just for DJ Crazy Times. I do the character online, but I’ve never released or written an original song for him.
So it’s kind of like a compilation album.
Essentially. I have all these songs that I’ve been doing in my live act for so long, it’s like, “Let’s see if we can find a coherent way to put them all together in one package.”
There’s only been a few comedy music acts that have truly crossed over into the mainstream. There’s Weird Al Yankovic and the Lonely Island… who are your influences and where do you think you fit into the genre?
I mean, it’s amazing. Bo Burnham is another person I love. I have tons of respect for all those people. I would say on my Mount Rushmore is Christopher Guest from “Spinal Tap” and “A Mighty Wind,” all those movies where he would do straight genre parodies. So, I don’t know, hopefully people think about my music in somewhat of a similar way. That would be cool.
Have you done DJ Crazy Times since you released your videos?
I performed “Planet of the Bass” live which was cool because it wasn’t at a comedy show. We debuted it at a Eurodance party in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at a place called Mood Ring. The DJ who hosts the party, named Moistbreezy, invited me and I was like, “Yeah, that’d be great!” And it was packed. I debuted the full song and it was just the best thing ever. And people were singing along to the song! It was insane.
How did your comedy career take shape over these last 10 years?
I’ve been sort of grinding it out in New York for a long time doing comedy. I started doing improv probably around 2014 — I was never really into stand-up — and then I developed a solo comedy performance so I could get booked on shows just as Kyle Gordon, and not have to have a whole group. So I developed this musical comedy act where I would do all these parody songs, and I was doing that for a while.
Then when the pandemic hit, that’s when I got on social media. And it’s weird how the internet is so bifurcated now, because I was building this big audience of people who have known me for doing social media comedy content for the past three years mostly on Instagram and TikTok. And now, I think the rest of the internet is finding out about me through this. So yeah, that’s kind of the journey I’ve been on.
What doors do you hope this opens for you? More live acts? On-screen acting?
A little bit of all of it! I’d love to do some acting if people asked me to do that. My big thing is to do more stuff like this, because with this album and this song I had complete creative control. It’s very much the product of my personal vision and taste. So if I could do more projects where people are like, “Okay, Kyle, here’s a bunch of money, do whatever you want. Come back when you’re done”… That’s my dream.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I just want to give a shout-out to Chrissi Poland, who is the actual singer of the song. She did an amazing job. And I also have to give a shout-out to my brother, Sam Gordon, who filmed the videos. He filmed it on my iPhone with a $30 gimbal and edited it. So he’s very much responsible for that.
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