Ugly is Beautiful is Pretty Good
Full disclosure: I love Oliver Tree. As far as internet culture goes, the guy is a genius. Not a musical genius but a genius. His release of his new album Ugly is Beautiful has been a masterclass of meme-ology.
Oliver Tree started out as a pretty dank internet meme. He rose to prominence on Youtube even doing interviews with the meme curators themselves, H3H3. Breezing through interviews in character, Sacha Baron Cohen-esque, it’s hard to separate the man from the meme. Which is why his album is so surprising.
His advertising for the album was basically a social media blitz of great stand-alone content. The piece de resistance was Oliver Tree, a known scooterist (?) scooter enthusiast (?), riding the world’s largest scooter while on stilts until he eventually fell. The whole thing was obviously a stunt and no one was injured but with advertising like that you’d expect an album that’s also a meme.
Not so.
Tree’s album is surprisingly personal and serious. There are no joke songs. Even though the music video for one of them has him wearing a pair of testicles on his chin, the lyrics are reflective and in some cases pretty touching. Even the title reflects the underlying theme of originality, necessarily imperfection, is beautiful.
His voice is alright though and the music is pretty basic. While it occasionally takes some surprising turns usually with the help of a little electronic interlude, it gets pretty repetitive and, on its own, lacks imagination. One of his signatures is that he hasn’t yet learned how to end a song and so most end quite abruptly. If it was just one song, I suppose that would be alright but it’s more than half the album.
His lyrics are surprising because of their sincerity. I thought it was going to be all part of the meme, Weird Al style. His Instead, his songs are heartfelt and reference the most difficult stages of his life. One of his music videos has him being crucified on a giant scooter so you can forgive me for jumping to conclusions. They stand outside the meme. They meander through his experience of isolation and loneliness.
One of my favorites is Hurt. Tree talks about a scooter accident in which he got quite hurt and started to reflect on the impact of his career. He seems to conclude that no matter he does, no matter what anyone does really, there will always be someone better. He doesn’t take this to mean that life is pointless but rather that he should do things out of love alone.
May of his songs are in that vein. Be yourself, don’t seek out materialistic shit, get real friends, stop talking and work hard at your dreams. Surprisingly cliché but not bad.
All of the smoke and mirrors around the album, which is clearly the result of Tree’s earnest efforts, has me questioning. Were all the interviews, all the stunts, all the videos just some sort of artifice to distract from the earnestness of the album? He even created a fake artist who is featured on the album –Lil Ricky—apparently the only artist that he “fucks with” right now. Is this all some elaborate defense mechanism? Or did he feel like the lyrics were too serious and he wanted to make sure the fuckery to serious ratio was appropriate.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not heavy hitting stuff, it’s a solid 7. It has to be taken in the context of the meme though. The seriousness of the lyrics round out the meme and give it a very endearing, human quality. With the album Oliver Tree has transcended his own made up character and has turned him from a two dimensional meme to something that is . The album doesn’t stand a lone, it stands within a growing body of work. If he is to be believed it is the end of that body of work.
There are rumors that he’s going to retire his ski jacket, bell bottom jean wearing, bowl cut sporting character. He’s said many times that this will be his final album and I think he even went on a bit of a farewell tour. For my sake I hope he doesn’t but Tree has shown that he’s not only talented, he’s smart. He’s one of the few Youtubers who’s managed to create an album worth listening to, all the while remaining one of the few Youtubers who’s content is consistently high quality. Oh and he’s crazy good on a scooter. Triple threat.