There are two things in this world that everyone should—and to my knowledge, does—like. Those two things are music and laughing. Simply put, there are very few legal things that can make you feel better than either of those things. That being said, it was only a matter of time before those two worlds began to clash and thus, comedy music was born. "Weird Al" Yankovic was perhaps the first artist to successfully combine rhythms and ribs into one fun-filled album. His parodical songs such as "Amish Paradise", which pokes fun at Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", as well as originals such as "Genius in France", paved Yankovic's path to worldwide fame and a permanent place in history as one of the greatest music comedians in history.

A few years into Yankovic's climb to stardom, in 1994, Jack Black and Kyle Gass thought it a good idea to start a comedy rock duo of their own, leading to what is now the well known act Tenacious D. In 2001, Andy Samberg and a pair of his friends from junior high came together to form the act that created a legacy of its own through Saturday Night Live skits that lifted their popularity as The Lonely Island to levels they never could have imagined, including the opportunity to collaborate with established artists like T-Pain.

Fast forward to 2014. A new YouTube comedian has burst onto the scene with his videos of generic pop punk, hardcore, and metalcore vocalist performances. His name is Jarrod Alonge, and through his satirical view of the scene he has built up a following that consists of over 180K subscribers on YouTube. The 23-year-old from Tennessee soon turned his comedy-about-music into comedy-music-about-music by using the band names he had used in his "Every Vocalist" series and turning them into real bands, starting with the demo version of metalcore parody Amidst The Grave's Demons' first song, "I'm So Scene".

After seeing success with this song, as well as the success of his most viewed "Every Pop Punk Vocalist", Alonge released another parody with the demo version of the pop-punk parody band Sunrise Skater Kids' first song, "Pop Punk Pizza Party", featuring Patty Walters of As It Is on main vocals. This song has been roughly twice as successful (in terms of views) as the original parody song from Alonge, and it soon became clear that this was only the beginning of his making music and pointing a mirror back at the bands and fans within the scene.

When Alonge finally announced the Indiegogo campaign to get his debut comedy album crowdfunded and later announced the completion of his monetary goal, the question that is asked of everyone putting out an album began to rise: will this be good?

"Beating A Dead Horse", Alonge's debut album, came out on May 26, 2015. The fifteen-song record covered and hilariously took shots at seven different genres and a multitude of bands. The album reached #1 on the US Billboard Top Comedy Albums list and topped out at #18 on the heatseekers chart from Billboard. The critical reception was solid, and the fan reaction was even better. The most viewed video on Alonge's YouTube for any of his original music sits currently at just under one million views, that song being "Hey Jarrod, What's That Song Again? (Metalcore Medley)", which parodies over a dozen bands including A Day To Remember, Bring Me The Horizon, Underoath and The Devil Wears Prada.

The original fifteen tracks have accumulated nearly 3.9M combined views on YouTube, and the six bonus tracks that were added on with the deluxe reissue add another 1.1 million views to that total. This success led to the comedian having the confidence to make another record—this time a pop-punk full length release—and therefore, "Friendville" by Sunrise Skater Kids was born, and it too was highly praised by critics and fans alike. Most recently, Jarrod Alonge released a metalcore EP from Amidst The Graves' Demons entitled "Space Zombies", and it has found plenty of success. As Alonge has taken time off after Warped Tour, and presumably before beginning work on his next parody project, I began to wonder how Jarrod made a living out of his self-proclaimed "repetitive" humor.

To me, the answer is simple in its plainest form. The music is good and the jokes are funny to the audience he is aiming at. While jokes about pizza and hating your hometown may not make sense to a 40-something-year-old who only listens to classic rock, Alonge isn't trying to make people beyond the boundaries of the scene get the joke. He is pointing all of his comedy directly at those in their teens and 20's who understand the music scene that they and Alonge are taking part in. He uses well known bands, themes and events within the scene to draw from and takes those and makes his own unique and tremendous ideas from them.

Adding on to this is the fact that there really is not anyone else in these genres of music doing what he is doing. Steel Panther parodies hair metal 80's bands quite well, but that is as close as anyone had gotten to reaching the alternative/punk scene before Jarrod Alonge. The lack of competition may help, but even with that, he still had to make good music and funny jokes within that music, and he has done so very successfully (to this point). His understanding of the music that he loves (whether he admits to loving it or not) through years of dedication to the bands he listens to, plus his success in comedy videos about music, have made him plenty of friends in the scene and built him a more than solid following, which quickly gave him the platform he needed to produce the album he must have waited years to put out. Now, all that's left is to wait for him to put out his next release. Hopefully, it'll be something from Midwestern emos, Canadian Softball.