Something has changed with The Axis Of Awesome.
Yep, you guessed it, Lee’s follicles have evacuated and he’s now decisively bald.
The AOA are music comedy deities – you’ve almost definitely heard their ‘4 Chords’ song on YouTube before, a rude awakening in itself that pop songs are just as simplistic as you feared – and they even have an updated version with all the new top 40 hits.
The Axis of Awesome have been around for a whole 10 years now, and have one hell of a back catalogue of songs and skits – but no matter how familiar you are with their songs, you’re still gonna enjoy ‘Won’t Ever Not Stop Giving Up’. They brought out some of the classics – Bird Plane will never age, it is forever a classic. There’s a few songs that haven’t aged overly well – misconstruing a German accent as ‘the language of love’? Hilarious. Descending into Nazi jokes? Not so much… Although there was a slightly brilliant joke about the division of Germany that drew a giggle out of me.
They have a definite knowledge of their target audience, settled firmly in Gen X, with some short songs flashing back to all their times working with Will Smith on raps for his films featuring some badass synchronized dancing, and a whole song dedicated to jealousy of younger successful musicians… with some slight bitterness added in.
I was totally in love with the degendering of popular songs that they did – turns out once you edit out the binary a few songs become bloody creepy, and others just more hilarious.
The Axis of Awesome have so much charisma between the three, and have thoroughly sorted out their dynamics (which tend to involve picking on Benny), and it feels like you’re watching your friends up on stage. I have no idea how long the three hung around afterwards taking selfies and signing autographs (thanks ,Jordan for critiquing my horrible photo editing on Instagram), and they’re clearly just as dedicated to their fans as their fans are to them.
Here’s to ten more years.
– Jasmin Ashton
Jasmin Ashton is a PR whiz and freelance writer/designer from Melbourne who has a lot of feelings about pretty much everything. Find them at @Jasmanna.
‘Won’t Ever Not Stop Giving Up’ runs 5-10 April at Max Watt’s. The venue is not wheelchair accessible.
Check out our guide to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for more great shows.
