How Bette Midler, Britney, and despair led John Early to his debut album

In his 2023 special Now More Than Ever John Early stalks the stage in leather trousers with microphone in hand and his band, The Lemon Squares, backing him as he sings. The footage is shot with a hazy reverence, the kind employed by Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz and subsequently became a visual shorthand for anyone looking to ape their classic rockumentary vibe. If you didn’t know better you’d swear Early was a Mumford-style troubadour, a whiskey-drinking ho-hey stomper about to seduce the audience with a rustic singalong. This, however, is Early - arguably the most influential comedian of his generation whose skewering of millennials' most self-centered and self-promoting foibles has seen him steal scenes in shows such as Search Party and Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave. He’s not about to turn face and embrace sincerity wholeheartedly.

“I’m going to take a request but I need order in the fucking court,” Early tells the audience. He urges people to “pick a Britney song you love” and shout it out, while dismissing anyone who doesn’t pick “Overprotected,” the one song he is obviously determined to perform. It’s a classic Early bit, a Type-A figure who is self-aware enough to present as benevolent while monstrous enough to do exactly what they want at all times.

Now More Than Ever, recorded live in Brooklyn, is as much a fully-fledged musical performance as it is a stand-up special. As such, its physical release leans into the songs as much as the jokes. In addition to the covers of Tweet (“Oops, Oh My”), Aaliyah (“Rock The Boat”), Donna Summer (“I Feel Love”), and Neil Young (“After The Gold Rush”) that featured in the HBO special, there are bonus renditions of Madonna’s “American Life” and “The Pain Of Loving You” by Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton. Slide guitar and soulful backing vocals bring the heartbreak of Dolly Parton’s 1971 original while “American Life” is similarly loose and wandering (and yes, Early commits to the bit and raps the line about driving a Mini Cooper and feeling “super-duper”).

Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Early explains that they are not designed to poke fun at the artists but rather the pompous type of person that would choose to earnestly perform them. “Approaching comedy like a pop star gives it a grandiosity that is just funny,” he says. As with many stand-ups who use music in their act, there is also a pretty naked desire to get up on stage and sing. “I’m a theater kid, ultimately” Early says as he holds his hands up to the accusation.

The FADER: Can you explain why you wanted to include these covers in your live show?

John Early: I love the cabaret form. Those old specials where someone like Bette Midler or Sandra Bernhard do sincere covers alongside the silliness of their act. On a practical level they provide a break, a pause from my incoherent ranting. I need the break from hearing myself talk and I think the audience might, too. I started doing these songs with this band in about 2013 because I wanted the show to feel less like a tight hour and more like here’s a groovy party you can stumble into. They set the mood for me. I have always presented myself in comedy as a psychotic and stupid character and the music is more reflective of who I am as a person. It gives people access to who I really am.

What I have learned from touring the show and then making both the special and the album, is how much the music brings out the emotion in the stand-up. I don’t think I am a good enough writer to bring out the despair in my comedy but the music really does that for me. Especially when I sing “After The Gold Rush.” The stand-up that precedes that is melancholic and wistful but if the music wasn’t there I would have just sounded like a crank. And I am a crank, proudly, but there is more to it. Cranks are that way because there is heartbreak underneath and I feel very heartbroken about the state of culture.

What was it about “Unprotected” that made you want to perform it in the show?

It’s got a teen yearning to break out from the chains of being stuck at home, the chains of your youth. Lyrically it has this bursting quality to it that obviously takes on a deeper meaning when you apply what was happening behind the scenes to Britney. Putting it into the live show was partly down to my band, The Lemon Squares, who are these boys who are used to making bluesy, rocky music. Any song you put through that filter instantly becomes grittier. It would be boring if I were just getting up there and doing precise, sterile covers. I’m not a particularly great vocalist so it makes sense that the music has this swampier, shaggier sound to it. The point of doing a cover is to interpret it and make it your own.

Have you ever considered writing and performing original comedy songs?

I have never wanted to do that, no. There is something about the devotional aspect of a cover, this reverence for the thing I didn’t make, that is beautiful to me. I grew up going to church and singing hymns, too. I think it’s connected to that. My song choice is comedic, obviously. I cover Tweet “Oops (Oh My)” because it’s about masturbation, of course. But comedy songs? I’m just not drawn to them.

A lot of your comedy skewers performative earnestness, and that is something that is prevalent in a lot of cover versions — from morose ballad versions of cheesy pop songs to ironic karaoke choices. Was that something you were thinking about at all while working on Now More Than Ever?

I hate the trope of slowed-down covers in a horror movie trailer. It seems like music, now, is all very ambient and the vocals are soft and whispered with a weird, cheap moodiness to it. I am very unmoved by that kind of cover. What I am trying to revive is an older version of a cover, the early ‘70s when The Carpenters, Isaac Hayes, Dionne Warwick and everyone else was covering Burt Bacharach songs. I think it’s cool and in these variety TV specials they would just do these beautiful covers. There was no irony, nothing was slowed down. That’s what I am trying to do, my own scrappy version of that.

I’m being hard on Millennials but I’m not trying to make fun of any one individual. I also try to implicate myself in the jokes, too. It’s more about this bombed-out cultural landscape that we have inherited. We’re obsessed with reboots and cover versions because we’re determined to go back to a time when there was real cultural offering for us and not just these scraps on the internet. We’re always just left with something that is lifeless and torn apart. Everything arrives to you just shredded.

Is part of that what inspired you to release this album? You’re part of the first generation who has only produced work for streaming platforms and that could all disappear tomorrow if someone makes that decision. This is a physical thing that will be on people’s shelves forever…

Yes, and that is so scary. It’s definitely part of why I wanted to make the album. My love of this sort of performing comes from buying vinyl. I once stayed in an AirBnB that had a record player and I bought two Bette Midler albums, The Divine Miss M and Songs for the New Depression, from a guy on the street and they changed my life. I didn’t realize how cool she was. She was doing duets with Bob Dylan and there was a smoky, crackling quality to it. My live shows have always been about getting things popping and sweaty and my hope for the physical release of this album is to do something similar. I want someone to find this album in the future and feel the liveness of the show.

Finally, in a recent interview with Seth Meyers you mentioned that you have to “release the sphincter” to reach the high notes on “I Feel Love.” Were there any other bodily adjustments needed to perform the songs on the album?

Yes, actually. “The Pain Of Loving You” also has a really high note that, for some reason, I didn’t change. I forgot that I was in charge. There is also another Donna Summer cover on the album (“My Baby Understands”) and I had to get drunk to do it. I love that song so much, and this is often a problem I run into, where I love a song and want to sing it but then realize I have backed myself into a corner where I have chosen a very vulnerable thing to sing. It’s a cliche of cabaret to “take it down” and I started to do one slow song in my sets as a joke. But then I realized I wasn’t equipped to actually perform the songs. The only way through at that point is brazen confidence or alcohol.