The Lonely Island tells the same joke twice

Mike Sholars
Editor-in-Chief
The musical comedy genre isn’t exactly bursting with fresh new talent; comedy and music are highly subjective art forms on their own, and consistently combining the two is a task best left to Weird Al Yankovic. The Lonely Island, composed of SNL funny boys Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, has managed to carve a name for itself over the past few years. Their debut album Incredibad introduced the world to their straight-faced satire of Top 40 songs, poking fun at the inanity of their lyrical content (“I’m On a Boat,” anyone?) while perfectly duplicating the sound production of the tracks.
That same mix of surprisingly high-quality production and sly lyrics with celebrity cameos returns on the group’s new album, Turtleneck & Chain. The album seems to be an exercise in restraint for the trio; almost every song is less than three minutes long, and the entire record clocks in at less than 40 minutes. The brevity works to the benefit of each song, with very few tracks overstaying their welcome.
The production is, simply put, phenomenal. The Lonely Island is putting out industry-quality beats, with industry talent to match. The list of cameos on the album ranges from obvious choices like Akon and Justin Timberlake to the inspired use of Beck and Michael Bolton (I anticipate a serious comeback for the latter).
As a self-confessed pop culture junkie, there’s a lot for me to digest in this album. Every song accurately parodies the style of a subgenre of pop music, focusing mainly on hip-hop and rap. Certain songs favour the obscure, like “Trouble on Dookie Island”, which has the group lampooning the slang-laced crime narratives of Ghostface Killah. I never thought I’d hear an SNL comedy troupe parody a member of the Wu Tang Clan, but I’m not complaining. “I Just Had Sex” cuts to the heart of the message behind every club anthem, and Akon fully commits to singing the titular hook.
Some of the best cameos are the ones that seem least compatible with the rap stylings of The Lonely Island. The central joke of “Jack Sparrow” is spoiled by the title, yet the whole concept is elevated by Michael Bolton, last seen on your parents’ favourite mixtape. The track probably has the best chance of actually getting played in a club, which speaks to the strange effectiveness of Bolton’s synthesized crooning. Beck, a musical genre unto himself, brings the fun weirdness to “Attracted to Us”, which could become an ironic hipster classic.
While Bolton and Beck make the songs their own, other celebrity cameos are little more than name-dropping. Hit-songwriter-turned-underground-sensation Santigold brings nothing to the track “The After Party”, and Snoop Dogg sleepwalks through the title track “Turtleneck & Chain”. While I applaud The Lonely Island for essentially getting popular musicians to point out the shallowness in their own songs, a handful of tracks off this album are prime examples of wasted comedic opportunity.
On the topic of wasted opportunity comes the most striking problem I encountered on this album. Of the 15 tracks on the record seven had been released online as SNL Digital Shorts before the album’s release date. The Lonely Island challenges its listeners to listen to a series of jokes repeatedly and find them funny after the first spin through the album. I heard the majority of these jokes through YouTube links before the album dropped, killing the sense of discovery I would usually feel while working through a new CD.
The Lonely Island found its popularity through video plays rather than radio spins, and the group’s music rewards the dedicated listener. Pop music junkies and hip-hop heads can play spot-the-reference with each song, and hilarious new lyrical corners reveal themselves on each successive listen. However, it seems strange that the trio would give up their best material online for free and ask their fans to pay for the same tracks on half of this album.
Turtleneck & Chain succeeds as a comedy album and works as a rap/electronica record, but it fails to bring enough new material to the group’s sophomore act. Who’s laughing now?