Before Kyle Gordon was DJ Crazy Times — the artist behind the viral Eurodance parody “Planet of The Bass” — he was a 17-year-old college freshman staying in Jennifer Garner’s old dorm room at Denison University.
Gordon, whose DJ character takes notes from ’90s Eurodance music, said he developed the DJ’s accent thanks to his freshman-year roommate, who hailed from the country of Georgia and told The Columbus Dispatch in 2010 that he felt Garner’s “soul” every time he walked into their room at the school in Ohio.
“This is really full circle,” Gordon told JS on the success of his hit. “So yeah, I think Jennifer Garner’s spirit really lives in the ‘Planet of the Bass.’”
Gordon, a New York City-based comedian, has been performing as the character since his college years. But in the past month, propelled by “Planet of the Bass,” he finds himself with a massive fanbase on social media.
The full version of the song and its corresponding music video dropped on Tuesday. Its success, like the projects of other artists in recent years, stems from the comedian’s rollout of snippets on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter).
“Planet of the Bass” has been subject to intense debate on social media, with versions playing with the trope of Eurodance music videos swapping female singers for models.
Audrey Trullinger, who stars as the fictional singer Ms. Biljana Electronica in Gordon’s first video teaser of the song, saw a replacement in a second (and third) teaser before eventually returning in the full music video to fans’ acclaim.
Chrissi Poland, Gordon noted, actually provides vocals on the viral hit.
Gordon, who has poked fun at teen rebels, award show presenters and old baseball players over the years, said he likes identifying tropes and highlighting them.
The decade-old character DJ Crazy Times, he said, explores tropes from the world of Eurodance, where the artist has an obsession with space, technology and sex.
“It’s kind of like that all getting mixed up in a weird, corny, digital stew,” he said.
The DJ Crazy Times character “came into its own,” Gordon said, when he started sharing clips early in the COVID-19 pandemic. But the song took it to another level.
“All the other songs on the album are songs I’ve been performing live for a long time, so I kind of had been testing them out in front of audiences for many years,” Gordon said.
Somehow, amid Barbenheimer hype and social media magic, his Eurodance parody morphed into a mainstream meme format. The success of “Planet of the Bass,” he said, “feels really good.”
The Jonas Brothers also showed love for Gordon, inviting him and Trullinger to perform “Planet of the Bass” at the band’s show in Boston on Tuesday. The “Sucker” hitmakers also hung out with the pair.
The massive arena performance was less than two weeks after Gordon played the full song live for the first time at a Eurodance night at Brooklyn queer club Mood Ring. It was a packed house, he said.
“I couldn’t have asked for anything better and that’s my goal — to strike the balance and make sure that the people who are really knowledgeable about this genre, way more knowledgeable than me, can appreciate it as funny and authentic,” Gordon said.
“But I also wanted to make sure that it’s accessible to an audience that maybe only has ambient sense of what I’m even talking about,” he continued. “When I can hit something that can appeal to both those types of audiences, that’s always my goal.”
Gordon said he’ll continue toying with musical styles on his upcoming album “Kyle Gordon Is Great,” including ’60s bossa nova, pop punk/emo and Shania Twain. The album is set to drop on Nov. 10.