One of the most popular new songs online crashed the party at a major concert in Boston this week, all as a fun gift from one of the Jonas Brothers to another.
The comedians behind "Planet of the Bass," a viral parody song that debuted in full on Tuesday after racking up about a quarter of a billion views on social media, took the stage at TD Garden in the middle of the Jonas Brothers show that day in what was a wild and perhaps slightly baffling culmination of a month of newfound fame.
"It was just so surreal that, in my mind, I was like an eight-year-old Kyle pretending to be Rock Star," said Kyle Gordon, who wrote the song and performs it as his character, DJ Crazy Times. "It was like as if no one was really real, I was just in my bedroom like, ‘Ah, Kyle Gordon, welcome to the stage!’"
Before performing at Boston's 20,000-person arena, the biggest room Gordon had played in was 400 people, he told NBC10 Boston on Thursday.
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Understanding the "Planet of the Bass" song (or not)
"Planet of the Bass" is a far cry from the average Jonas Brothers song. It hit the internet via Gordon's TikTok page in late July under the caption, "Every European Dance Song in the 1990's."
The energy from the thumping beat and let's party lyrics that don't quite make sense, like "Life, it never die / Women are my favorite guy," is matched in the original clip by DJ Crazy Times' European-inflected rapping and the buoyant dancing of the featured singer, Ms. Biljana Electronica, all in New York City's futuristic-looking Oculus transit hub.
As the clip went viral, it was written up in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and the BBC. Yet, while Vulture may have called it "the only real contender for song of the summer," that appeared to be news to a lot of people in the crowd at TD Garden on Tuesday.
Videos from the crowd at the concert show that only a fraction of the crowd understood the joke. Gordon pegged it as "a strong 10% contingent that were losing their mind and then maybe a large contingent that were like, ‘What the heck is going on?’"
He understood why, pointing out it's a "very weird song with very weird lyrics" that had only just debuted.
"You go to see the Jonas Brothers and you’re like, why is this, like, short, Latvian man, like, running around on stage?" Gordon joked.
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That's how Audrey Trullinger, the comedian who portrays Biljana Electronica in the original social media post and the official music video, experienced it, too.
"We went on and confused all of Boston," she said in a TikTok recap of what she nevertheless called "essentially the best day ever."
Getting DJ Crazy Times and Biljana Electronica to Boston
So how did it all come together? In a whirlwind, Gordon said. He'd just returned home to New York City, then officially debuted the song and hit the road for Boston with Trullinger.
"Nick Jonas had been following me on TikTok for many years so he just DMed me," Gordon recalled. "I was literally in the airport, flying back from filming my music video and, yeah, they just reached out and said, Do you want to come on stage and perform?' Originally it was going to be at their New York Yankee Stadium show but it just didn’t work out with the timing, so it was very cool that they invited me to be Joe’s birthday present."
The Jonas Brothers are definitely fans. They posted a TikTok on Tuesday with Gordon and Trullinger — er, DJ Crazy Times and Biljana Electronica — lip syncing to the start of the song in a room with birthday decorations.
Trullinger's video shows the band having cake on stage and a backstage birthday soiree after the concert.
Gordon reflected on the trajectory the song's taken, calling it "completely crazy."
"Did I think when I was cooking all this up, I was like, you know, 'We’ll put this out first, I’m sure the Jonas Brothers are going to love it, they’re probably going to invite me on?' No, that was not in my calculus. All of this, all the interviews, all the going onstage with the Jonas Brothers, yeah, I don’t think I’ve fully processed it," he said.
More viral hits may be in store. "Planet of the Bass" is part of a whole parody song album, each track a riff on a different musical genre. It's due out in the fall.
