Decorated stand-up comic and Daily Show staff writer Josh Johnson explores uncharted territory to redefine the relationship between comedy and music and will release his ambitious 33-track mixtape Elusive on June 11. Today, Josh released "The Way You Are (Part 2 of a Love Story)" along with stand-up comedy tracks "Love Is Schedule 1" and "Rom Coms."
"It's the emotion you feel when you find out who someone you love really is," says Johnson of "The Way You Are". "A thorough description of what this ambivalent and potentially illusory lover is like and what that reality may mean... pining for an acceptance or resolution that may never come."
Written by Chicago musician Groovebox and Josh Johnson, this track is a heartbreak in progress laced with sweet nothings and a full account of why this person is still worth loving even if all that devotion meets a dead end.
Elusive weaves the Chicago comedian's shrewd and self-deprecating observations on the absurdities of modern dating and American decay with nine music tracks (most of which he co-wrote) that roam the same thematic terrain. The epic work was announced with the release of "Bought An Axe" and "Dating Profile" comedy tracks and the music track "I Like You Too (Part 1 Of A Love Story)."
"Part millennium escapism, part modern Negro spiritual," Elusive weaves the Louisiana-born comedian's shrewd and self-deprecating observations on the absurdities of modern dating and American decay with nine music tracks (most of which he co-wrote) that roam the same thematic terrain. "I think it's more creative and interesting to see what a song sounds like that's about what the previous two comedy tracks are about," he says. "What's being relayed in that pain, musically, that isn't in the stand-up?"
Elusive is composed of two halves, or "arcs," as Johnson calls them. In each arc, comedy, and music intertwine like a double helix. The first arc refracts the timeless need to forge romantic (as well as platonic) relationships through the surreal lens of the pandemic. "You used to have to at least try," Johnson says of Covid-era romance on "Dating Profiles." "And now a dude's Tinder profile can just be a picture of a bottle of Purell next to a roll of toilet paper with the caption, 'I can take care of you, queen.'"
The second arc is more specific to the politics that bubbled to the surface since the pandemic began, as Johnson tackles student debt, Confederate statues, the American healthcare system, and the true nature of Black-on-Black crime. The musical interludes give shape to the mixtape-so-called because of its experimental and collaborative nature-and serve as its north star, articulating a mixture of hope and sorrow and an emotional clarity that any parade of jokes naturally obscures.
Johnson's comedy pedigree speaks for itself. Before The Daily Show, he wrote for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He performs regularly on late night and at venues like the Comedy Cellar, and in 2019, he opened for Trevor Noah on the Loud & Clear Tour in arenas across the country. He's released a comedy album (2017's I Like You) and a half-hour special on Comedy Central. But nothing he-or any comic, for that matter-has made compares to Elusive, a singular comedy project that is concerned above all with form.
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