Hot Dad’s Serious Album "Comedy" Is Coming to Vinyl

Prolific "emotional comedy" musician & YouTuber partners with Future Imperfect for his first LP

Hot Dad performing in Austin, TX (photo by Niles Davis)

You may have seen his YouTube videos for such original songs as Big Money Salvia, It’s Time to Clean, I Love to Piss, and I Really, Really, Really Like This Image.

As silly and fun as these songs and their videos are, Hot Dad also infuses his washed-out retrowave dreampop dad rock with deep and complicated feelings. He calls it emotional comedy music. It’s funny, but you might cry.

Take for instance his song If U Reply, in which a lonely Facebook user posts to the online void in the hopes his crush will react (“If you hit Like, I’ll smile / If you hit Sad, I’ll cry / But if you reply, I’ll come and stay with you there tonight / And hold you tight”). The pathos exists between the sincere, warm, longing timbre of the song and the knowing pity of the listener: you just know, as you do for the protagonist of Genesis’s Misunderstanding (1980), there has been no misunderstanding — she’s just not that into you, bro.

And there’s Banana Road, a straight-faced stylistic sendup of Springsteenian Americana-nostalgia rock with seriously silly lyrics. Its sonic craft is such an authentic love letter to the genre that you can’t help but feel tingles at the story of a young man’s rocket ride and crash through music stardom with his pal Clovis playing drums on tin cans on old Banana Road.

Or take his most recent video, I Will Never Rock. At face value, it’s a protest song against the mere existence of songs (that’s funny); in its sonic and textual undercurrents, it’s the last whelp of a creative soul whose dreams have been all but pulverized by the 9-5 grind. This character vows never to rock, roll, sing, or play. But he does rock — he’s doing it now — and we don’t want him to stop, lest we stop too.

So it should come as no surprise that Hot Dad created a layered full-length album with Comedy. Its title gives away the gag: this is not a laugh-out-loud “comedy” album; this is a sincere work that explores the inner world of a hyperactively creative individual always feeling the pressure to be funny, or to be present, or to be organized, or to otherwise navigate a world that seems, at times, designed to make you fail. But Hot Dad’s particular sense of humor and ever-sharpening sonic sensibilities make this anything but a downer.

Completed in 2024, Comedy has never seen a full release, though it has been available to Hot Dad’s patrons on Patreon. Now, Hot Dad has partnered with Future Imperfect to bring this record into the world as a physical, limited-run LP coinciding with its official digital release.

I’ve loved Hot Dad’s music for a long time, and Comedy is an artistic achievement¹. I’m thrilled to bring this album to you the way it was meant to be heard: on an anachronistic physical medium that isn’t really a joke.

We’re just getting started on this project. Follow for updates.

1. Disclosure: Future Imperfect is the label releasing this record. I have a financial interest in its success. So, when I tell you the album is great, believe me, but also know I want you to buy it.