Is Richard Cheese Trying To Destroy Pop Music Or Save It?

The world was introduced to the character Luke Skywalker in the first issue of Marvel’s “Star Wars” comic book, which appeared a month before the film was released in 1977. The world’s most famous Jedi was thus described on the cover: “Enter Luke Skywalker: Will he save the galaxy, or destroy it?” That line makes me think of the singer and comedian Richard Cheese, and not just because one of the funniest of his many albums is a “Star Wars” parody.His voice is both mellow and tender, as well as highly attractive — it’s the same sort of boudoir baritone we’d expect to hear singing about pennies from heaven or what happens when the moon hits our eye like a big pizza pie. When we listen to the lyrics closely, though, we find he’s actually telling us that he likes some explicitly detailed parts of the female anatomy, that he’s hot for teacher, that he’s down with the sickness — that he is, in fact, a freak on a leash. He likes “big butts” and he cannot lie.Richard Cheese is the stage persona of Mark Jonathan Davis, a singer and comedian who is perhaps the most sublimely subversive musical satirist working today. His basic conceit is to take pop hits of the last 20 years or so — especially hard rock and rap numbers — and croon them as if they were, by turns, romantic ballads or jazz standards, in the manner of an especially unctuous Rat Pack-era Vegas lounge singer. He calls his band “Lounge Against the Machine,” and identifies his sidemen with appropriately cheesy stage names: pianist “Bobby Ricotta,” bassist “Billy Bleu,” and drummers identified as either “Bobby Gouda” or “Frank Feta.”Jazz singers and crooners have always been drawn to songs from outside what is generally accepted as the general jazz standards repertoire. For instance, Kurt Elling sings a monster version of Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” and Dean Martin actually sounded more comfortable crooning contemporary country and western laments than he did singing Cole Porter show tunes. Such performances are handily described as interpretations, a term that also applies to at least some slices of the Cheese oeuvre. On certain numbers, like ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” he does what many 21st century jazz singers do, in taking a relatively modern hit song and simply swinging it in 4/4, jazzing it up in a way that’s more or less appropriate and even tasteful. What elevates the Cheesemeister to a realm entirely his own, however, is his knack for swinging or crooning rock and rap anthems that are entirely inappropriate, taking two or more genres and slamming them together, thereby creating humor from the clash between cultures.There’s a rich and long tradition of musical parodists — from Spike Jones deconstructing standards and big band hits to Victor Borge and P.D.Q. Bach, who consistently deflated the pomposity of the classical music world. Their closest modern day descendent is probably Weird Al Yankovic, who has delivered some devastatingly funny parodies in his long career. His mantra could be that of Krusty the Klown on “The Simpsons”: “I kid because I love.” When Weird Al makes fun of a Michael Jackson hit like “Beat It,” there’s a definite element of affection present.Not so much with Richard Cheese. His parodies are savage rather than sentimental; he has come to bury pop music, not to praise it. When Kurt Elling sings a song by Bob Dylan (his “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is a classic), he looks for common ground and tries to make the idea of these songs in a jazz context sound completely natural. Mr. Cheese, conversely, seeks not to reconcile the styles of different genres and generations but to turn them against each other and, in the process, nothing less than to tear down the whole firmament of pop music, to implode all of our preconceived notions of what pop is supposed to be. When Richard Cheese takes on “Brass Monkey” by the Beastie Boys (on “Baking at the Boulder,” his 2015 album taped live at the Boulder Theater in Colorado), he turns it into a nonsensical rhythm song of the kind that Slim Gaillard might have performed in 1945 — and thus he is, in effect, telling us that both are ludicrous. Mr. Yankovic’s approach is to undercut and soften the edge of contemporary pop and therefore to defang it; Mr. Cheese does just the opposite. By playing with the rhythm and the general style, he remakes pop music and comedy into something entirely new and dangerous. After hearing him croon “Gangnum Style” in phonetic Korean (on “Supermassive Black Tux”), there’s no way we can ever take that song seriously again, if indeed we ever could.My favorite track by the Cheesester may well be “Baby Got Back,” which attacks rappers and crooners in equal measure, equating Sir Mixalot with Dean Martin. He starts with the familiar Valley Girl intonation, “Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt,” and proceeds from there. In crooning this classic of the rap genre, along the way he has to compose an actual melody that could be sung by someone with an actual voice.Having already produced a brilliant album of Hawaiian and island music (titled “Richard Cheese presents Johnny Aloha – Lavapalooza,” 2010), his latest release is the Latin-flavored “Besame Queso.” Here, he takes extremely incongruous and inappropriate themes and subjects them to the style of a mariachi band or the Tijuana Brass. His “Paradise City” sounds like Guns N’ Roses at a bullfight, while “WAP” has him lovingly crooning Cardi B’s obscenities like Ricky Ricardo at the Club Tropicana. “I Am The Walrus,” sung in part in Spanish (“Yo Soy Morsa”) is just gloriously silly — in fact, part of the humor is that this John Lennon absurdist classic simply does not scan en clave. Along the way, something else happens: As Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote, “For the grand destruction one must be worthy.” When Mr. Cheese goes to work on “Watch Me (Whip / Nae Nae),” a hit from 2015 by the then-17-year-old rapper Silentó, he imbues the song with an intellectual significance that it never would have enjoyed otherwise. Is he saving pop music or destroying it? In the remarkable canon of “Richard Cheese,” these are ultimately the same thing.

Is Richard Cheese Trying To Destroy Pop Music Or Save It?

More from the New York Sun

A Coming of Age Story of Rare and Welcome Warmth, Courtesy of Macedonia

How the UAE Can Contribute to America’s War Effort Through its Banking System

Presidential Records Act Is Finally Challenged

NASA’s Artemis II Astronauts Prepare To Leave Earth’s Atmosphere Bound for Moon

Iran-Backed Militants in Iraq Float Prisoner Swap for Kidnapped American Journalist as Pentagon Weighs Risks of a Rescue Operation

Vermont Teen, 14, Qualifies for Governor’s Race

Trump Removes Bondi as Attorney General, Saying She Will Return to Private Sector

Christian Commentators Voice Outrage Over Spiritual Adviser’s Easter Lunch Remark Comparing Trump to Jesus