“Look Who’s Inside Again” by Bo Burnham
Perhaps by this time, we can conclude that spending too much time “inside” alone may have had an adverse effect on Bo Burnham. He took it upon himself to put together a comedy-based special while concurrently dealing directly with the first near-global lockdown in world history, with the United States being one of the countries most affected by such.
So at the same time, he was tasked with being “funny” while simultaneously “stuck in a room”. And based on the lyrics, we can conclude that he found said experience challenging.
Burnham also uses the experience as an analogy for being “stuck in his room” as a child. The implication is that, in terms of said past, maybe he was on punishment or something like that. And being uncomfortable under such circumstances, he would “do any old sh*t to get out of it”.
So we can further gather that when he talks about being confined in the present, he isn’t just doing so for the sake of doing. Instead at certain points he truly felt as if he were imprisoned, for lack of a better word, and had to do what he had to do in order to retain his sanity.
And it would also appear that it was under such pressures, if you will, that his hit show “Bo Burnham: Inside” was conceived. In fact even though we have yet to watch said program, from what we have gathered thus far this particular song may be the closest it has to a title track.
In other words, the project would be the result of Bo once again finding himself “stuck in a room” as with the days of old, doing his best at “making faces… telling jokes [and] making little sounds”.
Credits and Album
Look Who’s Inside Again was written and produced by its vocalist, Bo Burnham. It is part of an album entitled Inside (The Songs), which itself is part of a larger Netflix project called Bo Burnham: Inside.
Bo Burnham
Bo Burnham is a comedian/musician who has been professionally active for quite some time now. In fact Inside (The Songs) is his fourth full-length album with the first, simply entitled Bo Burnham, coming out back in 2009. And as of the writing of this post for all intents and purposes he can now be considered an A list comedian with the aforementioned Bo Burnham: Inside garnering a notable reaction from the general public.
This is so helpful thanks
But what about the end of the song
Maybe something to do with the police since it says “ Now come out with your hands up we’ve got you surrounded “then being put into a prison cell and being “ stuck in a room “
thats a good idea. i was confused too
exept, why would he go to jail?
Think of the jail as the room. “You’ll do any old shit to get out of it.” Getting out of the room IE the jail.
As for the “Now come out with your hands up we’ve got you surrounded.” Maybe thats an analogy for his fans always wanting him to come back?
In my opinion I think the song is about a boy not seeing the outside world…so like you know an introvert (or maybe a child whos being kept in his room studying all day or lacking social interactions). And then he wants to get out of the room by being an extrovert or something. Like feeling more ‘free’ by saying jokes and whatever. But i think when he tries to interact with the outside world hes just going to be scared and confused, because he’s always stuck in his room, its like being out of his comfort zone. So the end of the lyrics probably means that aka finally stepping into the outside world and having difficulties adjusting…and how ‘we’ve gotten you surrounded’ probably links to the anxiety hes going because of this.
I always interpreted that part about anxiety and agorophobia. Its like they are telling him that they’ve caught him one again and now he is surrounded by them.
Probably because of his past?
Maybe???