Kyle Gordon - Kyle Gordon is Everywhere
BY oliver gerharz
Best known for his 2023 debut “Planet of the Bass,” Kyle Gordon is a parody musician most recognizable for his viral music video singles. On Oct. 2, Gordon released Kyle Gordon is Everywhere, his third studio album in three years. Featuring nine songs, the album has some of his highest highs and most uninspired lows.
This album is broken up by narration from Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the role of the “Center for Musical Pretension’s Reinhold Brinkmann musicologist in residence.” On the introductory first track, Radcliffe presents the album’s spoof framing device: the fictional Dr. H. Kyle Gordon has compiled “ten of the most significant, compelling and amusing songs from the last one hundred years.”
Gordon tends to frame each release like this, but this concept is far more interesting than the radio station dial that governs 2024 release Kyle Gordon is Great or the bulky Top 10 countdown that makes 2025 release Kyle Gordon is Wonderful somewhat of a slog. These gimmicks all have the same job — allowing Gordon to explain the joke. This album does it better than the others.
The album finally opens with “Mr. Jambo,” the standout single released this July. In it, Gordon takes on the persona of singer-songwriter Barry Bergen. The song is a hilarious and overt parody of Paul Simon’s Graceland and similar colonial mysticist sentiments, with Bergen approaching a random African man seeking mystic wisdom.
However, this African man is just some random guy. Bergen’s hilarious response to the man’s confusion is to interpret the few words he offers in Zulu as the wisdom he is seeking. The song is fun, catchy and in-your-face; it’s no wonder it achieved the popularity it did. The performances of Phindile Mathonsi and Mandla Dlamini as the voice and face of Mr. Jambo, respectively, really sell the relationship between the characters.
Angikhulumi isingisi,
Unaye umhumushi?
Yeka ukuklabalasa.
-"Mr. Jambo"
I don’t speak English,
do you have a translator?
Stop yelling at me.
-"mr. jambo" (Translated)
The third single from the album, “If You Break Up With Me,” has Gordon embody the lead singer of the fictional band 10 Year Plan as he explains exactly what he’ll do if his girlfriend dumps him. The song’s dark lyrics expertly juxtapose its cheerful energy, with Gordon sometimes dipping into the same vocal range as his Fred Durst character from “Crawl to Me.”
The song’s subject matter spoofs the sexually aggressive undertones of music from alt-rock in the late ‘90s. This is one of the most explicit ways that Gordon has explored this theme through his music; highlighting inequality through parody is always a purpose with Gordon, from “Mr. Jambo” to songs parodying the sexism of other musical eras like “Ugliest Girl On The Beach” and “Horniest Kid in School.”
“I’m a Whore” is the third track on Everywhere and the last music video single. It’s an obvious riff on indie sleaze club music, with more edge than most of Gordon’s discography. The song is silly, but really needs the music video to sell it. Also, he made an alternate version called “I’m a Horse.”
The biggest surprise standout from the album was the rock song “Hero of Fallujah,” the first track without an accompanying music video. Its absurd lyrics about 9/11 radicalizing Americans to go and fight in Baghdad are laugh-out-loud hilarious, and the instrumentation is excellent as well.
However, there isn’t much worth saying about the remaining five songs on the album. “Freak Out” is a Hannah Montana song. “Horniest Kid in School” is a spoof of youthful 1950s love songs. “We Are the Zorg” uses a stream of technobabble in a satire of the soundtracks of sci-fi movies. Goth rock genre parody “Blasphemy” is quite long and has a lot of Gordon’s moaning on it, which makes for an uncomfortable listen.
Clearly, the back half of this album has a problem. While Gordon was able to put out some real heavy-hitters, these songs have more of a niche appeal. “Freak Out” and “We Are the Zorg” could be really excellent to listeners familiar with what is being parodied, but they lack the general audience appeal of “Mr. Jambo” and “Planet of the Bass.”
This problem is best exemplified by the final track “Congratulations,” a parody of joyous 80s disco like “Celebrate” by Kool & The Gang. In the past, Gordon has parodied a similar energy on “We Will Never Die,” a riff on the overenthusiasm of 2010s “stomp, clap, hey” music. There, he subverts expectations by placing the absurd sentiment of eternal youth at the core of the song, but on “Congratulations” Gordon’s only attempt at humor comes from lyrics that are over-the-top in their positivity. This falls flat — the positivity here is beyond parody.
What Gordon does on Kyle Gordon is Everywhere, besides having a more humble title than Kyle Gordon is Great and Kyle Gordon is Wonderful, is consistently less impressive when it comes to parody. The inspiration that led to albums full of heavy hitters isn’t there the way it was on previous albums.
While each track is funny in its own way, Everywhere is tragically top-heavy, with each song on the album a little less funny than the one before it. While there is probably something for everybody, the album as a whole might not be for anybody. This comes as a result of the stylistic range that comes from Gordon casting such a wide temporal net for the parodies on this album. It turns out that when Kyle Gordon is Everywhere, he’s a little all over the place.