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What Somebody Somewhere Star Bridget Everett Is Listening to Right Now

What Somebody Somewhere Star Bridget Everett Is Listening to Right Now

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The actor, comedian, and cabaret hellraiser talks about an R&B song that sounds like “pure, hot sex” and what she puts on when she needs to get her steps in.

Bridget Everett
Graphic by Callum Abbott (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for HBO Max)

Bridget Everett first started turning heads and dropping jaws in New York City around the turn of the century, when she would commandeer a Manhattan pub’s karaoke night, standing barefoot on the bar and belting out classics like “Piece of My Heart.” These over-the-top performances led to her finding cult fame as a star of the downtown alt-cabaret scene, where her joyously raunchy shows usually ended with her motorboating audience members and hosing them down with booze.

In Everett’s semi-autobiographical HBO dramedy Somebody Somewhere, her alter-ego Sam is more likely to make a quietly cutting joke than uncork a tipsy song while riding some guy’s face. But the show’s occasional musical moments reveal something profound about its main character. The first time Sam unleashes her robust mezzo-soprano, it’s in a church refashioned into an after-hours performance space by a new friend, who urges her to take the spotlight. She slowly works her way through a piano-backed cover of, yes, “Piece of My Heart,” eventually gathering up confidence and ripping her shirt open at the song’s climax.

In the show, which wrapped its first season last week, Everett’s Sam is an aimless test center worker who returns to Manhattan, Kansas (Everett’s real-life hometown) following her sister’s death. She shines in a role that’s more nuanced than most of what she’s done before; Sam pokes fun at her friends and family to lighten everyone’s mood one moment but then quickly guards herself from them the next, hiding a wellspring of grief.

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Everett’s real life has always been lit up by music. Her mother was a music teacher, who impressed Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand, and other ’70s icons in her memory. And as the youngest of six, she soaked up hits from a wide range of genres. “My brothers would have DeBarge, Air Supply, and REO Speedwagon, and my sister would have James Taylor,” she recalls. “It was a different sound coming from each room.” She briefly attended Arizona State University’s classical-voice program before making her way to New York in the ’90s.

With its homespun details and dark humor, Somebody Somewhere is both a deeply personal passion project and a word-of-mouth success (the show has already been renewed for a second season). “It was important to have music feel like part of the emotional life of the show, but not have it be like, here comes a show tune,” she says. “It was more like the fabric of the show and less the point of the show. That’s how it is in my life—I’ll be sitting around with friends and we’ll just start singing some dirty hook with each other to try to make each other laugh.”

Here are a few tracks she’s been having a good time with as of late.

Muni Long: “Hrs and Hrs”

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Bridget Everett: I follow this account on Instagram called They Have the Range, and they did a challenge where different people sang a 20-second passage of this song. And I was like, Oh my god, what the fuck is this? It’s pure, hot sex. Muni Long is a really well-established songwriter, but I didn’t know her as a performer. Her voice is incredible. I saw she put up a voice memo on her Instagram page where she sang the idea [for “Hrs and Hrs”], and it’s basically how the song turned out. As a songwriter, I respond to the things that I could just never do. I have always wanted to write a classic “Let’s Get It On” kind of banger. And I mean a banger, like, “let’s fuck.” [laughs] That’s a banger.

Karriem: “I Love You”

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My friend Neal Medlyn, aka Champagne Jerry, made a playlist and this song was on there. I remember thinking, I’m good friends with him, how could he have kept this song from me? It’s got every element for me. The main thing is it’s great walking-down-the-street music, which I love—you know, a song with a great bassline or mid-tempo kind of vibe. It’s so cheerful and so open. I was like, “I’ve got to buy everything that this guy’s ever done,” but this is the only song that Karriem has ever released, which is a crime. I’m always fascinated by people that are on the brink, but never quite got there. Seeing people that are so wildly talented that don’t break through in the way that they should have—I find that inspiring in a way.

Universal Togetherness Band: “Ain’t Gonna Cry”

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I was just getting together with some friends for the first time after a long stretch of not getting to hang, and “Ain’t Gonna Cry” by Universal Togetherness Band came on, and we just all dropped out of the conversation. None of us had heard of them before, and we were all fascinated with their story. They were these young guys in Chicago who got a bunch of free studio time but never really released anything. There’s not a lot of video of them back in the day, but one of their sons or grandsons found out about them and was like, “I need to put this shit out.”

I was excited that we were able to use some of their music in the show, too. It felt like something that we were all responding to. Also, while we were shooting, I was trying to get my fucking steps in, and it’s nice to have something cheerful in your ears while your body goes through something that it absolutely wants no part of.


 

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