"Planet of the Bass" is a 2023 novelty song by comedian Kyle Gordon, released as the lead single of his debut album Kyle Gordon is Great.
Styled as a parody of Nineties Eurodance, it features Gordon as his DJ Crazy Times persona with featured vocalist Biljana Electronica, another character performed by vocalist Chrissi Poland and portrayed by Audrey Trullinger.
Prior to its official release in August 2023, a video clip of the song featuring Gordon and Trullinger as their characters went viral on platforms like TikTok and Twitter, building hype for its eventual premiere.
Links: Music Video,
Original 1997 VHS Version
"Planet of the Bass" provides examples of:
- Adaptational Dye-Job: In the shorter clip videos, Biljana Electronicas 1 and 3 (Audrey Trullinger, Sabrina Brier) are blonde, while Biljana 2 (Mara Olney) has dark hair.
- Affectionate Parody: One of Nineties and early-2000s Eurodance music.
- Alien Abduction: The climactic ending of the music video has DJ Crazy Times being abducted into Biljana's space ship.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: While the song itself was originally written in English, its Word Salad Lyrics are deliberately meant to invoke a hastily made translation for comedic effect.
- City Shout Outs: DJ Crazy Times shouts out Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia), a fairly random choice compared to some of Eastern Europe's more known cities.
- Cool Shades: DJ Crazy Times tries to pass off shaded swimming goggles as these.
- Fun T-Shirt: In the first video, Biljana wears a tank top with the slogan "When God made man, she was only joking". It also briefly appears in the full video.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: All of the lyrics are somewhere between "slightly nongrammatical" and "total word salad", spoofing the shaky Gratuitous English often heard in Eurodance songs.
- The Greys: The aliens featured in the video have this appearance.
- Human Aliens: Biljana is presented as this in the music video.
- Non-Specifically Foreign: It's unclear what nationalities DJ Crazy Times or Biljana Electronica are supposed to be, but Gordon has cited Danish group Aqua as his primary inspiration for the track, while the name "Biljana" is of South Slavic origin, indicating that they would be from those parts of Europe. There's also the "Bratislava!" Shout-Out. Additionally, Gordon stated on Twitter that he intended to film the song's music video solely in the former territories of Yugoslavia, hinting at the characters hailing from that region.
- Mythology Gag:
- Biljana is portrayed by Audrey Trullinger in the official music video, but the other Biljanas (Mara Olney and Sabrina Brier) briefly appear on a computer screen as alternate options before she's finally created by a computer.
- One of the outfits worn by Biljana in the video (the pink tanktop with white pants) is the one seen in the initial viral clip of the song, which went on to produce quite a few pieces of fan art.
- Retraux: The song and video in general are this, but special mention goes to the "Original 1997 VHS Version" of the video, presented in 4:3 aspect ratio and 480p resolution with added film grain to make it look like an old VHS tape recording of an MTV broadcast from the late '90s.
- Shout-Out:
- Aliens being involved and the rather dodgy CGI evokes "I'm Blue".
- The light-and-poppy female vocals contrasting with the masculine, broody, (and sometimes horny) male vocals were inspired by Aqua, but are far more evocative of Culture Beat (especially "Mr. Vain") and especially Lords of Acid and E Rotic in being outright horny. In fact, the "I want sex on the phone" is a direct reference to... "Sex on the Phone" by E Rotic.
- The fanciful, but borderline nonsensical lyrics anthromorphizing music, along with the weird metaphors from the male singer, recall Snap's "Rhythm is a Dancer". No cancer here, though.
- When DJ Crazy Times is abducted, he stares straight up into the light with his wrap around shades and a blank expression on his face, replicating the box art for Deus Ex
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: The bulk of the track is performed by Biljana Electronica, with DJ Crazy Times himself interjecting with rapped lyrics.
- Word Salad Lyrics: Tying in with the song's parodying of Eurodance, the lyrics are deliberately nonsensical, as if they were originally written in a foreign language before being sloppily translated into English. This is particularly apparent with the verses, which features lines such as "Take your heart into a unicorn; If the sky is not green, but the sky is blue" and "Life, it never die; Women are my favorite guy."
