Kid Cudi and Tyler James Williams Eerily Predict a Hit Broadway Musical
It's not just your imagination.
Billy Joel and Green Day, Alanis Morrisette and Tina Turner, The Go-Gos and The Temptations.
What do they have in common?
Each of them (and way too many more) has had their songs turned into jukebox musicals.
These kinds of musicals have become so ubiquitous that several years before Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations premiered on Broadway, there was a comedy show that foresaw its existence—with one hilarious difference.
That’s right: This Temptations musical only has enough money to license one song. The first time I saw this, I laugh-snorted. And even though I know the joke by now, watching this still makes me giggle because it’s so silly.
(Seriously, it’s worth watching the clip to see how they keep finding a way to work the same song into the plot.)
While it was a funny joke to make back when the sketch aired on Comedy Bang Bang1 in 2015, it was also eerily prescient, since the real Temptations musical opened on Broadway in 2019.2 Or maybe Broadway has just become that predictable?3
And no, it’s not your imagination. That is Tyler James Williams as one of the Temptations, appearing here several years before his scene-stealing role on Abbott Elementary. Besides featuring charming rapper/actor Kid Cudi4, this clip also has Hearts Beat Loud actor Kiersey Clemons in one her earliest roles too.
Reading recs:
**I find Jennifer Lopez fascinating. Whatever you think of her, she has achieved a longevity that is increasingly rare in Hollywood. That said, her new movie This is Me…Now, is…a lot. The phrase “over the top” was invented to describe what’s basically an hour-long biopic/music video.
But the movie also says a lot about Lopez and why she has endured, as noted in this astute Vox article. J.Lo is cannier than she’s given credit for, as “she’s the kind of celebrity who can make sense out of any creative decision.”
**Also at Vox: Hoard your cheese! We might have a shortage soon, sigh.
**Electric Literature offers writer horoscopes for the Year of the Dragon. Mine says that “perhaps only write before five pm, or never write on weekends." Except that as I write this, I’m not following either suggestion. Oh well.
This week’s fun fact:
When I searched for “really random celeb facts,” this one came up. I could probably find something more interesting, but I’m going to try to heed my Year of the Dragon horoscope and wrap this up. So…
Before she was a superstar, Ariana Grande was known as the "Boca Kid" for getting struck by hockey pucks, not once, but twice.
And she was only five years old when it happened! I feel like I need to make a “Thank You, Next” joke here, but Grande already did.
Thanks for reading, and hope you have a good week in which you don’t get pelted by hockey pucks. Or anything else, really.
Comedy Bang Bang might be best known as a long-running podcast, but it also was also a talk show parody that aired from 2012-2016. I have a fondness for this series because I binged it while working on my first book back when it was on Netflix. It can now be seen on Pluto TV and acts as a pretty good capsule of pop culture in the later Obama years.
Down to the fact that they share the same name: The fake musical is called Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, while the real one is Ain’t Too Proud.
I heart Broadway, but I miss original shows with original songs!
For a show that was only on for five seasons, Comedy Bang Bang went through three different bandleaders: Reggie Watts (who then jumped ship for James Corden’s Late Late Show), Kid Cudi and then Weird Al Yankovic.