At some point in his life, Matt Buechele realized that if you listen close enough, most musical productions tend to sound the same. So, at the end of 2018, he released a video on Twitter called “All Musicals Sound Like This”. The 48 second video breaks down a protagonist’s song in a funny, yet accurate way.
“I did a couple impressions [of John Oliver and John Mulaney] that received a good response and motivated me to make more videos, but my 'All Musicals Sound Like This' video was the first thing I made where things started to blow up,” Matt explained. The video was retweeted by Mindy Kaling which caused him to gain thousands of followers overnight! As of July 2019, the video had been seen 1.77 million times! Buechele described his videos as “a fun little niche” but he was quick to add that he doesn’t know what to make of himself (and his amazing number of views) either.
“I tend to jump around a lot with the type of content I post (musical theatre, political jokes, and auto-tune original songs) so give me at least a 2-week trial period, please…. I feel relatively new to the ‘online content creator’ world. There are so many funny people cranking out hit after hit and I often feel like I'm just trying to keep up.”
Earlier this year, under the name, “Booshell”, Matt released Fun Bops to iTunes and other music platforms. The EP includes songs like, “Should I Plug My Phone In Before I Go To Bed?” and “I Look Like I’m Always Tired”. He laughed and said that he hopes people “have a good time” when they listen to it.
“It's kind of my ‘Greatest Twitter Hits of the Past Year’. I'd like to eventually release a sequel with featured comedians and songwriters. For now, I'm happy with the product and glad that those songs exist outside of Twitter so people can easily pull them up anywhere.”
On a more serious note, “Booshell” has also released a single/video called “Waiting” which he is extremely proud of: “I made the entire thing on my iPhone and I thought the result was really mesmerizing when viewed on your own phone.”
In addition to freelance work, Matt currently goes from temp job to temp job to make ends meet, but he has created a page on ko-fi.com (similar to a Patreon account) in order to help his financial situation: “At first, I felt kind of weird about setting it up, but the generosity of my followers has been really surprising and incredibly flattering.” Buechele's background is rooted in stand-up comedy and he was raised on Disney movies. So, it makes sense that he aspires to have his own musical on Broadway in the future, despite some of his present challenges.
“Well, at the heart of all my comedy is just a simple observation. Many of my videos come from a place of, ‘Hey, why do these certain songs have this type of vibe? I should address that.’ I think my comedy background has helped me to edit things down, punch up lyrics, and package my videos in a way where people will actually take the time to put their headphones in and watch…. I grew up very engaged with the Disney animated collection. Some of my first memories of musicals and movies are from watching Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, etc. I became obsessed with the soundtracks and scores. Elton John and Alan Menken can do no wrong by me.” Matt then added, “I played Lewis in a high school production of Pippin so that wacky, sad-boy, acid trip of a play will always (for better or worse) have a small corner of my heart.”
In terms of creating his own show, Matt said, “…Plenty of really kind Twitter users have suggested ‘Musical: The Musical’ but I have to imagine that would get boring around minute 10. I love doing the parodies and I'm sure they could find a place in something I work on but I have bigger aspirations for what the future of Broadway could look like. I want to be the first Broadway composer that celebrates auto-tune. I want to create big arrangements featuring 808s, hi-hat rolls, and a full orchestra. There are a lot of modern sounds that we hear every day in popular music and the theatre world has yet to explore that.”
When asked what he was looking forward to for the rest of the year, he replied: “Oh boy. I'm currently working on a couple developing projects that I'm really excited about and I can't really go into detail about them yet. I'm also looking forward to working with new collaborators. There are so many funny people I've discovered and recently met that I want to make things with. I'm trying to make it my goal to [contact] more people that I admire in hopes that we can make a funny song or video together.”
Finally, Matt Buechele offered the following advice for others wishing to follow in his footsteps: “I guess my advice to people that want to start making things is to not wait for the perfect scenario. You don't need to save up money for expensive gear. You don't need to hire an editor or a Director of Photography. You just need to have a solid idea. Every video I've posted in the past year has been shot on my iPhone 6 and edited in a crappy, free video editor I found.”
For more information, please follow Matt Buechele on Twitter.
Photo Credit: Mike Bryk.
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