Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside (The Songs)’ aims for where few comedians have gone before: the Big Four.
This story is part of Billboard’s 2022 Grammy Preview issue, highlighting the artists, issues and trends that will define awards season. Read our cover story on Halsey, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross here.
Tyler Arnold was only 20 minutes into Bo Burnham’s latest musical comedy special, Bo Burnham: Inside, released on Netflix in May, when he started searching for the songs online. When he couldn’t find them, the Republic Records A&R executive immediately reached out to the comedian’s team to change that. The album Inside (The Songs) arrived on streaming platforms on June 10, and it has remained on the Billboard 200 for 19 weeks, including five in the top 10 — a remarkable achievement for a comedy album, and a sign of the project’s widespread resonance. (It has already won three Emmy Awards.)
“From day one, we knew this album could compete at the highest level and didn’t want to box it into a comedy-only campaign,” says Arnold. Indeed: This month, the Recording Academy deemed the project ineligible for best comedy album; instead, it’s under consideration in the best compilation soundtrack for visual media and the Big Four fields (where no comedian has been since Robin Williams was a best new artist nominee at the 1980 ceremony).
