Har Mar Superstar Is Pop Music For People Who Hate Pop Music

You guys should really be paying attention to Har Mar Superstar.

The Myth, The Legend

The man I referred to as a “pop music god” in last week’s LinkFrogging released Dark Touches, his fourth album in eight years, today.  Like all of his previous records, Dark Touches hits you like a Trojan horse; you don’t REALLY figure it out until you’re in too deep.

Har Mar Superstar is a musical version of The Aristocrats: if you focus on what’s supposed to be funny, you miss the humor.  The value for both the famously vulgar joke and the infamously vulgar singer comes in the journey, not the destination.  I’ll let Wikipedia handle the full bio, but here’s the Twitter-sized capsule: Sean Tillmann, an indie-rock vet, performs R&B and sex-pop (is that a genre? did you cringe when you thought it might be?) as his fictional brother, “Harold Martin”.  Yes, that’s more than 140 characters (I’m bad at Twitter).

Gotta get paid, son.

Despite being about 5’5 with a slight paunch, Har Mar owns the stage during his live shows, gyrating and stripping until every show ended with him wearing little more than sweat, skivies and a sneer, twirling the microphone like a nightclub singer and belting out a disco favorite like “Sir Duke.”

So it’s a performance piece, right?  I mean, you don’t make cheesy music videos, repeatedly talk about how awesome you are, cultivate an image as a Ron Jeremy lookalike and still take yourself seriously, do you?  Well, sorta.

Har Mar Superstar is pop music parody at it’s highest form.  “Subtle” is the last word you’d use to describe the man, but his on-stage persona has settled somewhere between Tony Clifton and Seth Galifianakis; the longer you watch, the less convinced you are that it’s an act.  He will stand half-naked on stage rocking a song about drunk-dialing (“DUI,” the first single from 2004’s The Handler — sample lyric: “I’m the lonely man with the roaming gland”) and believe that – to paraphrase Kanye West – it’s one of the best records of all time.  It’s that earnestness, that ability to completely sell out, that makes him so fun to watch.

In case you were wondering if the title was a metaphor.

Dark Touches rivals The Handler as possibly his best.  But where the 2004 album (and 2002’s You Can Feel Me before it) had callbacks and influences from musical icons like Stevie Wonder and the Jackson Five, Touches has a more contemporary sound.  The lead single, “Tall Boy,” – a shamefully catchy song he originally wrote for Britney Spears, then recorded himself, keeping the female perspective – shows off one of his trademarks: making double entendres out of EVERYTHING. On “Creative Juices” (see what I mean?) he shoots off carefully chosen pop culture references so quickly that it comes off like a hybrid of “My Humps” and “Fire Water Burn.”  One of the later tracks, “Almond Joy,” sounds like an R-rated b-side from New Kids On The Block.  But throughout the entire album, there’s never an overt punchline or even a hint of sarcasm. There’s no joke.  Get it?

Justin Timberlake is the closest thing we’ve got to a self-aware pop star, making occasionally-cheesy chart-toppers then going on SNL to mock himself and his peers.  But Har Mar does him one better – he’s a pop star with a keen sense of irony and no apparent fear.  He skewers the pop star condition by completely committing to being one himself.  There’s no winking to the audience; if you like it, you don’t need an explanation.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, those are cross-trainers.

That’s not to say Tillman is trying to be this generation’s Andy Kaufman: besides the new album, he stars (as Har Mar Superstar, doing kind of a reverse Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson thing) in a series of “Crappy Holidays” web videos and recently landed a developmental deal with HBO alongside friends Ellen Page (Juno) and Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development).

With all these new projects, it’s hopefully only a matter of time before the rest of the world understands the greatness Har Mar Superstar.  I’m not saying you should get in the ground floor.  I just want to make sure you were warned.