Jordan Firstman did not set out to turn videos of him reading inherently ridiculous sentences into a running, viral piece of internet lore — it just turns out he’s exactly the right person to spin twisted confessions into comedy gold.
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“I think I just have the kind of personality where nothing really shocks me,” he tells Billboard over Zoom, before quietly chuckling to himself. “I think I have something wrong in my brain where I cannot understand that people would be shocked over something.”
Firstman has been posting his Instagram series Secrets — in which his followers submit anonymous sentences disclosing some of their wildest personal tidbits — since the pandemic. Taking simple messages ranging from the mundane (“I voted third party”) to the truly absurd (“I k-holed in a guys bathroom on the 1st date n robbed him”), the comedian started to slowly transform some of his favorite secrets into short songs. Next month, the singer will bring his long-running gag to a brand new format with his debut album.
Secrets, due out Friday, April 4th via Capitol Records, takes those same direct messages from fans and transforms them into brand new songs — the first of which (“I Wanna See My Friends’ D–ks”) fans will get to hear on Thursday (March 14). Spanning genres and subject matters, the album plays back to front as a raunchy, raucous ride through Firstman’s unique comedy lens. Plus, he adds: “The songs sound f–king amazing.”
Below, Firstman chats with Billboard about the origins of his Instagram series, how he scored a major label record deal and why modern pop stardom requires singers to have comedy chops.
Take me back to how the Secrets Instagram series started: what made you want to take your followers’ deepest, dumbest secrets and turn them into content?
It was a very pandemic thing; I had the idea to use the questions box to ask [for secrets]. I actually was kind of making songs out of them pretty immediately, just by myself with no beats or anything. I think the character limit means you cannot get into full stories, so they just felt like these little soundbites that were great to make fun of. To this day, who knows what’s real and what’s not, but I try to just use the ones that feel real.
I know you’ve referred to this as your “indie” series behind something like your very successful Impressions series — at what point did you realize that Secrets was really hitting a nerve with your audience?
It’s such a social media answer, but this was a way to just have this immediate connection with your following. I’m far from the first person to do this — there was stuff like PostSecret back in the day. Kind of like comedy, you cannot own the style, but you can own how you do it. So, I think what’s made it stick with my followers is just, I guess, my own sensibility and my own take on things.
At what point did the idea occur to you that those songs you were making could become an album?
I guess about a year or two ago, I had just been compiling these free MIDI files of different genres, and I would just play them in my apartment when I was bored. I have this friend, Brad Oberhofer, who is a brilliant musician, and I asked him if he would want to do one live with me, and that was the beginning of the new era of Secrets. We just kind of became a great team, and the songs were really fun. It wasn’t until this summer that I was like, “Ok, so we should start recording a couple of these and see what we get.” It became clear within a week or two that there was something there. I asked a couple other friends to start helping out, and within that first month, I think I had 10 or 12 songs recorded, I had a record deal, and it all happened really fast.
How do you go about selecting which submissions make for the best songs, versus which ones are just good for normal Secrets submissions?
When I’m doing them with Brad, I probably get anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 secrets every time I do it. And so there is this kind of pressure every time we do it, so I do get drunk. [Laughs.] It’s kind of the only way I can move that fast, because we usually do these in about an hour, and we’ll do anywhere from 10 to 20 mini songs. The more we’ve done, the more we’ve wanted more production in there, so it’s not just us and a guitar, it’s us having this very fast live setup. We just scroll really fast, and whatever pops up, we just do it. It’s become a very instinctual thing. Like, yeah, “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill” is obviously a country song. Obviously! But we’re working so fast that we don’t have time to think about it.
But then on the album, luckily, all of the secrets are logged [on Instagram]. So I’ve gone through my archive and I found so many good ones. I’d say a little less than half of the album are secrets that I haven’t made songs out of yet, but that I was like, “Oh, this is a perfect premise for a song.”
In working with Brad, as you’ve been putting these together, have you started to kind of find the sound that you’re most comfortable with? Or is the eclectic genre approach very much the point?
There is a major level up that happened on the album. It’s truly every genre — there’s an amazing jazz song, there’s a Nirvana-style song, there’s a funk song, there’s a post-punk song, there’s a Central Cee-type song where I rap. We’re probably missing, like, classical? But on the deluxe, I do want to have an insane song title, and then just have it be classical music with no lyrics.
Was there any part of this process that proved to be a challenge for you?
The songs are kind of gendered, and the titles immediately tell me if it’s a boy or a girl singing it, and so there are some songs that are absolutely girl songs. I do, however, have a male voice, so it became a question of, “How do I sing this song from a woman’s POV?” On at least one of the songs, we do pitch me up a little bit, but it’s still my cadence. There’s one almost-Lilith Fair-style ’90s lesbian song that was really challenging to find the right vocal tone for.
Let’s talk a little about the record deal — how did that process start, and why did you go with Capitol?
So basically, I have four main producers now — Brad, Blake Slatkin, Zach Dawes and Sega Bodega. I have really good people, so now the songs sound f–king amazing. But Blake and I had a session, and within an hour, we had the single, done and ready to go. We knew it was a f–king smash. After that, we sent the record over to Capitol. I went in literally the next day to play them a couple of songs, and then they were just like, “Yeah, we would like to do this with you.” I didn’t even really meet with other people, because it was like, “They get this, and they’re going to do it in the right way.” They understood it so well immediately, so we just went for it.
I remember the next week, I went into a big boardroom with the chairman of Capitol and president and the vice president, and I played them “My Sister’s Tryna F–k & She Needs to Chill.” And they got it! It was very aligned, the whole experience just felt right. I don’t know, sometimes there’s this rhetoric [from artists] of “F–k the labels,” and I’m sitting here like “I don’t know, they’ve been great!” [Laughs].
Comedy music has been picking up some steam over the last couple years, with people like Bo Burnham and Tom Cardy earning big viral songs in the genre. Why do you think this genre is having that moment right now?
I think music is now bigger than it’s ever been, and then comedy is so inherent to music right now. Like, you can’t really be a musician right now if you don’t have a sense of humor. Look at Sabrina Carpenter — in a way, she is making comedy songs! And Lil Nas X! With social media, everyone has almost had to turn into a comedian to thrive.
It’s interesting — this is definitely a comedy album, for sure, but it’s almost some songs more than others [are comedy songs]. When I think about what I’m doing, to me, it’s not in line with most of the comedy albums that have been out lately. I would actually compare it more to something like Bloodhound Gang — they’re real songs that are also funny. The joke isn’t the main part of the song, but they are still funny.
This is a huge time for you with this album, the success of English Teacher, your upcoming role in Rachel Sennott’s comedy series — what are some things that you’re still hoping to accomplish in the months and years to come?
It’s a big year of firsts for me, and I kind of just have to do the work. I’m excited to see what sticks. You can’t be attached to any real outcome, but I don’t know. Everyone who hears this music just really likes it, and so I have a good feeling about this. It’s been a slow and steady build, and it’s starting to feel like the projects this year are the things that I’ve been really prepared for. So, I’m just excited to see the response.