Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 67 Tay Zonday - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: May 1, 2015

Creator of “Chocolate Rain,” one of the most popular songs the internet has ever heard, Tay Zonday, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss his early life and how he suffered from severe anxiety, & agoraphobia, the conception of Chocolate Rain, how he handled the whirlwind of instant fame, and how he was able to harness being laughed at by turning it into a career that he loves and continues to this day. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes and language. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is the creator of one of the most popular songs the internet has ever heard, Chocolate Rain. That's right, Tay Zonday. Now, if you had a computer in 2007,

or at least a library card that allowed you to go to the internet section of your local library, you remember Chocolate Rain. This video went viral back in that summer and immediately propelled Tay to the internet hall of fame. He quickly became the subject of parodies, tributes, remixes, everybody wanted a piece

of that sweet chocolate rain and today, nearly eight years later, chocolate rain has racked up over 100 million views. And for those of you who didn't have a computer or a library card in 2007, I'm gonna give you a refresher. I know you've seen chocolate rain since then but I just want to describe it

because it's even fun to just describe it. To have it wash over you, so to speak. Yeah, even without even seeing it. In Chocolate Rain, the sapia-colored video portrays Tay wearing a white t-shirt and singing in a microphone with his signature deep voice. There's occasional cuts to Tay playing the keyboard, and every once in a while, according to the text that he placed on the screen, quote, moves away from the mic to breathe in. Chocolate Rain is a staple in the internet pantry people.

Not pantry people, I was referring to- In the pantry, comma, people. Comma people. He's created a kind of online nostalgia, really, that immediately transports you back to the moment you first heard Chocolate Rain. It's like when, I don't know, when like JFK died for like our parents or something.

Or when you had your first child. Or that. Kind of like that. It's kind of like having a baby listening to this song. I'm gonna transport you there again right now. Chocolate Rain Some stay dry and others feel the pain Chocolate Rain right now. rain. The prisons make you wonder where it went, chocolate rain. Build a tent and save the world, dry chocolate rain. Zoom the camera out and see the light, chocolate rain.

Now, the craze over chocolate rain eventually faded, but Tay has continued to maintain a career in web video for the past eight years and learning to ride that wave of chocolate rain, that wave of chocolate rain, you get that? I'm gonna use as many of those analogies as the fact that it's just rain, it's water, it washes over you, you can ride the wave. Just help me out, I'm gonna sprinkle you with it. You can drink it in.

The ocean is a wave, it's not, does rain create waves? It can if they get enough of it. Anyway. Suck it down. It's not, does rain create waves? It can if they get enough of it. Anyway. It comes in sheets. The sheet. But not in waves. He learned to ride the sheet of chocolate rain that led him on a really interesting journey into what it's like to be known so well

for something that became unintentionally huge. And we talked to him about what it's like to build a career on a moment like that. Yeah, we also talked to Tay about his life before the sheets of Chocolate Rain, how he suffered from severe anxiety, agoraphobia, and went many years essentially being a mute. We talked about the creation of Chocolate Rain

and how he handled all the craze and instant fame, including our interview with him back in 2007. We also talked about how he perceives people's perception of him. Perception inception. It gets psychological. And I think I, we both said the word fascinating. Fascinating.

About like multiple times during our conversation with Tay because you know what? It was fascinating. It is. I wasn't doing a Spock impression. You're going to enjoy this biscuit, but first we wanna tell you guys about our sponsor who remember helps make Ear Biscuits a reality

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There's a number of questions and we've got quite a history to go through, not only with you as a person and as a performer, but also with us collectively. I think there's some good stuff we wanna head on. Definitely. But having not released videos this year yet on either of your YouTube channels, we were trying to, you know, do some research, do some catch up. And one of the first things we found was an article out there that said.

Multiple. Multiple articles. Oh, wow. All right. Saying that you were spotted shopping for engagement rings with your girlfriend. Are you engaged? Oh my, I'm behind the times on this. I need to, apparently I need to be reading TMZ.

Well, that was only one of the articles. Find the latest on Tay Zonday. Well, the second article said that you had had a secret wedding ceremony. Oh my goodness. I am just behind the times on Tay Z the times now i'm behind the fan fiction now i'm looking at your face and i'm trying to figure out are you legitimately surprised and you you do legitimately look taken aback by this oh no i'm not are you engaged i actually am not i am

not engaged uh you know i don't have time for relationships you know people are always asking hold on you're not even in a relationship oh my goodness i seriously i can't even find time to like tie my shoes i seriously and it's funny because people always say oh tay you must get all the ladies you must get all the whatever like you who are you after and it's like yeah i mean uh well but the thing is be surprised how dull my life but there's articles no and it and the interesting thing is- I haven't seen these articles. There's this one source. This one source. It's difficult to ascertain the reliability of this source,

given our conversation already, but also given the nature of this website. When we were just trying to catch up on you, one of the things that- Multiple articles, including the engagement, the secret looking for engagement rings, very large diamonds at a store. I mean, I like this version of T's on dates. I wanna be this.

A secret ceremony with a quote from a close friend. I'm not kidding, it was just like, this is, where's this, you don't know about this thing, huh? Apparently I haven't been Googling myself lately. Okay, well I'm gonna look it up right now. So you haven't, you're not engaged, you don't know about this thing, huh? Apparently I haven't been Googling myself lately. Okay, well I'm gonna look it up right now. So you haven't, you're not engaged, you don't have a girlfriend. Have you been just perusing the diamond section

just for kicks? I actually have not, but. See, every time you say that, I think you're about to say I actually have. You're like, I actually am engaged, but you're like, I actually am not. You keep hooking me. Well, no, I mean, honestly, it's the most boring topic I could possibly think of.

Like, I think the media and the world kind of fascinates about these aspects of your personal life. And you two go through this. I mean, you're kind of big time now. You're kind of semi-famous. You have the speculation and the fanfic. I'm sure you've seen yourself in different cartoon configurations and whatever else people do out there about you.

We have team members who tell us not to read the fanfic. Hold on, dude. Team members who allege the Red and Link fanfic. So I am thoroughly enjoying this Tay Zonday fanfic. It's much more interesting than the real Tay Zonday. No, but I have got to read the headlines of some of these articles because this is this one source that is, Hold on. It's much more interesting than the real Tay Zonday. No, I have got to read the headlines of some of these articles, because this is this one source that is,

now that I'm reading the titles of the articles, I'm realizing this is like a whole celebrity news spoof site. And give us the date. This is like very recent. This is not like a year ago. This is like a few days ago. Today that we're recording. Is it April 3rd of the day we're recording this?

April 2nd. So it's the day after April Fools. All right. So we did think maybe it's April Fool, but it's not. Tay Zonday nude photos leaked online. Oh my goodness. Look on it. Tay Zonday's dog recovering from surgery.

That was March 28th. Tay Zonday secretly married, that was today. Tay Zonday named sexiest singer alive, that was yesterday. Tay Zonday Times Person of the Year 2015. And this is all one website. What's the name of the website? MediaMass.net. Oh.

Tay Zonday to be a dad. Tay Zonday goes Gangnam Style. Tay Zonday single again. Hey, I'm everybody's daddy. I'll do that. No. Tay Zonday is the highest paid singer

in the world. That was yesterday. And Tay Zonday, new album in 2015 World Tour. This is, you're not in charge of this website, are you? Apparently not, though. I mean, some of them I'll take, you know, hey.

Is this your version of a publicist? You know what they say about all publicity? It's suspicious. That is good publicity. I'm just so intrigued at this point just by- What does it say about Rhett and Link? Nothing. Oh, it says nothing about, come on.

It meaning the internet? Oh, no. Or it meaning this website? It's a satire site, guys. Nothing. Oh, it says nothing about, come on. It meaning the internet? Or it meaning this website? It's a satire site, guys. Oh. Yeah, which that makes a whole lot of sense now. But they're fixated on satirizing you. Oh, it's a Know Your Meme.

Media Mass is a parody news site best known for debunking celebrity rumors. This is like us just live on the air discovering the onion. I feel like this is a paid promotion for Media Mask. It seems like it. Are they handing money under the table here? Let's see what it says about us.

Let's see what it says about us, guys. And I'm going to be disappointed if it doesn't say anything about us. But there's a Tay Zonday article for every single day. Is it automatically generated? It says absolutely nothing about us. Oh, my goodness. And you have like 50 articles on this thing. Oh man.

Well, you know, I guess I am- We fought for it. I am winning that procedurally generated algorithmic satire article game. Can you expound upon this recent tweet in your Twitter feed? Now this was posted on April Fool's Day. It was. I'm tired of lying. I'm attracted to aliens.

I want to cuddle an alien. Feel tentacles all over my body and make interspecies children. Now, you see, I think that April Fool's is like Vegas in terms of what happens on April Fool's stays on April Fool's. And so it is

April 2nd. I think saying that it's April 2nd is kind of like pleading the fifth. So I am just going to separate myself from all actions, all digital trails that were left by me on April 1st. But can I make an observation? You can make an observation. Okay, so you've just confirmed that this was an April Fools Day prank tweet from you.

But I think that gives insight into your sense of humor because it's not, it's such a bizarre tweet. You thought he was serious? No, I'm just saying if this is a joke, it's an interesting joke. I mean, I believe these articles about him getting married. Yeah, you're the one who fell for that.

I'm just saying that, Tay, if I read this sincerely, well, it's weird. If I read it as an April Fool's prank tweet, it's still weird. Interesting. Now, why is that? Because it's not a joke. I guess this is the reverse interview. Yeah, you're like, what am I supposed to be falling for? I thought it was hilarious.

Okay, okay. I thought it was riveting. I'm not saying it's not hilarious i thought people would look at it and be like oh wow you but are you put you were playing into like the way that people like to speculate about you like i bet he wants to make love to an alien no no no but but i think you kind of hit because the larger question here and the larger problem is like, I have problems with whenever I try to be deliberately funny. I cannot be deliberately funny. I can only be incidentally funny.

Okay. And that defines my career, where it's like, I can be just being me, just being every day and not trying to be funny, being quote unquote, the straight man's called an improv comedy uh you know just fascinating and it's fine it's funny people laugh at it like oh gosh he moved away from my computer i didn't but when you go for the joke when i go for the joke people have the exact reaction that you're having what's like tay uh okay maybe that was a little bit funny but you know it's it's also kind of creepy. You hit the wrong note there, dude. I mean, I know you were trying to be funny, but this is fascinating. That is a legitimate Tay Zonday joke.

Yes, that was Tay Zonday's attempt at a joke. Got it. And you are having a very typical reaction to my deliberate attempts at humor. So many interesting things happening already. But isn't it, it is, you know, your self analysis there, I think I'd like to unpack over the course of this entire conversation.

We can get into that. Before going all the way back to your birth, because I do want to go all the way back. Oh, all the way back, all right. Let's go back to the first time that the three of us met. We met in that hotel. Yes! That poolside room.

The Roosevelt! The Roosevelt Hotel. To do a segment, what was the show, Online Nation? Yes! Yes, you had your show on the WB. Exactly, and I'll set the stage here because we. By all means. But I'm glad you remember.

That's amazing, yeah, I think we may have touched base about this at one time over the years, because this has been eight years ago that this happened. Just to put some perspective here. But we were hosting the show, Online Nation, on the CW, which some of the listeners may know was a really horrible show that we hosted four episodes of. It was a clip show, we tossed to internet videos.

And your video had gone viral in either the spring or summer of 2007, and then our show was coming out in the fall of 2007, and there was this whole debate about is it too late, does it make us seem out of touch to talk about Chocolate Rain, the first episode of this, in one of the first episodes of the season, and we were like, I feel like we've got to talk about this because it was such a big thing.

And they were like, well, you guys, you know what you can do? You can go and interview the guy behind this thing because he's gonna be in LA for Jimmy Kimmel. Right, so this was at the height of Chocolate Rain. Oh, absolutely, I remember. But Online Nation wouldn't, the first episode would not air for like another month.

Until like October. That was the question of the timing. But, you know, we wanted to not just be hosts, but we wanted to go out on location. We wanted to create content. And part of that, if that was an interview, then hey, we were fine with that. You know, it was our first time working in LA.

We had visited. And, you visited and we were intimidated by everything and then now we're being told, okay, we've got like 20 minutes with what we all call the chocolate rain guy. We didn't know you as Tay, even though we knew that was your name and we were gonna interview you. And yeah, I guess Kimmel had put you up at the Roosevelt.

At the Bullseye Room at the Roosevelt. And it's funny you recounting that experience of L.A. because that was actually my first experience in L.A. as an adult, at least since I was a kid. I'd been there a couple times. And I just remember that sense of awe of being amazed. Like, you know, you feel the sunlight on Hollywood and Highland and it kind of it's this weird filtered by pollution sunlight that you don't get in the south or the Midwest. And it's like Minnesota where you were Minnesota where I was at the time.

And so just that sense of L.A. being so new and feeling different. And I was totally green at the time of that interview. Like that was just like me being caught up in the whirlwind of the craziness of not knowing what to do. And we can illustrate that because- We go to your door, we knock on your door with our producer and your manager who was also your,

a relative of yours or somebody at the time, I think you were traveling with like a, was it a brother or a cousin? I don't think my brother was there, but. Somebody who was handling you at the time comes to the door and says. Well, we opened the door and we can see through the door, which is on the hallway side,

we can look through your room and see the pool where we wanted to set up the interview. Yes. And so we said, hi, we're here for the- I remember it being a weird, awkward situation somehow. Is this what we're getting to? Yeah. And we were like-

I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was, it felt very awkward. Your guard was up. And we were like, can we, yeah, we wanna, you mind if we do the interview pool side? And you were like, sure. And then we were like, okay. A yeah, we wanna, you mind if we do the interview poolside? And you were like, sure. And then we were like, okay. A little bit of imitation of me.

Can we just walk through your room, get to the pool, it's right there. And you were like, no, I prefer that you walk around. Well, what is he hiding in there? I was in boundary mode. We could have been anybody at that point. Well, I just. We were anybody. I wasn't expecting a film crew.

Like, I think I was just kind of freaked out. Because we had a guy with a camera. He's going to walk through your room. Yeah, and I have so many stories of just kind of being a little bit freaked out by the entertainment industry. And now it's just like if a film crew is coming, I'm just like, hey, sure, come in, do whatever. I know what they do. I think at that time, I was just uh literally i went from being a nerd and we'll get to this if we're starting for my birth but i guess let's go in there yeah i was

literally a nerd in my living room making music as a hobby singing in front of bed sheets and chocolate rain sat around for two or three months without going viral uh right it was posted on the front page of dig which is kind kind of like Reddit back in that day. The views doubled in a week. Someone saw it on Dig, posted it on 4chan, kind of became a joke there. And they prank called it Tom Green Show. And it just kind of started to take off and go viral. But the point, getting back to that moment in the hotel, is that I was so swept up by like literally in a period of a couple of weeks, 30 or 40

radio interviews were completed by me in a very, very... It was a whirlwind. Whirlwind. You know, agents of all types, booking agents and publishing agents everyone, and their mother, people wanting me to sing at their bar mitzvahs, sing at their corporate parties, trying to contact me about this video, and I was literally still just a nerd in my living room inside.

And this is the thing that I want to get into as we talk about that video kind of catapulting you to fame, is that sense that at that time was probably the beginning of you figuring out exactly what people were seeing in it and being like, okay, I'm beginning to understand what they're interpreting me as and how I'm playing into that.

Absolutely. So I think the best way to come back to that and talk about, you know, Chocolate Rain and then the last eight years is to go back to the beginning and who you are, where you're from. All right. You're people.

So you start out, you're not Tay the moniker yet, you are Adam. I am born Adam Bonner, sometime in 1982, while living in Chicago. I am the youngest of three by quite a bit. My brother is six years older. My sister is 11 years older. I would say being around older people all of the time tremendously shaped my personality. I always felt very driven to be and act older than I was at every age. And I think it also contributed to my being very much an observer. I observe the behavior in other people and I observe and I mimic. And I think that tends to be a dominant aspect of my personality even today. Okay. what was the parental situation

both parents in the house what both parents in the house very very lucky uh to have two parents and they are still wonderfully married uh to this day and a lot of kids don't get that yeah um and what what did they do or do now uh they were teachers my dad taught high school um and uh my mom taught elementary school and then she was a principal for 20 years and uh you know i think the the benefit of that uh as a parent is you get to see how other people's kids turn out uh and uh you kind of uh i don't know if that shapes i mean i don't know first of all i have to say because we kind of started with the relationship silliness. You know, right. First of all, being in a relationship, sustaining a relationship is one of the hardest things you can do.

And so I am absolutely amazed that my parents or anyone else who's been married a long period of time. I mean, that is hard to be with one person for 20, 30, 40 years, but then to have kids and raise kids. And again, that is one of the most difficult things you can ever do. And I had no appreciation of this as a kid. So I think these are insights that I kind of get being an adult, being 32, almost 33 now, reflecting back on my childhood. I think I see it with much rosier glasses and much more forgiving glasses because I'm kind of in the world and I'm like, wow, that must have been really, really hard. Yeah. Does your explanation of being kind of the young kid chameleon looking up to the older people kind of growing up early, another way people put that is he's got an old

soul. Absolutely. I had a tremendously old soul and everyone told me that when I was like 10 years old. So it wasn't just something you reapplied in retrospect because people ask about, well, you got the deep voice and well, surely you're affecting your voice and things of this nature where it's people start to question and try to deconstruct you that you derive the reasons for that. Or is it something that even back then your parents were like, yeah, you were he was always an old soul. I was always very much an old soul. I remember one of my favorite role models when I was nine, 10 years old was Lieutenant Commander Data on Star Trek The Next Generation. And I loved the idea, and also Spock on the original Star Trek, I loved the idea

of being reserved and super intellectual and somehow greater than my own humanity. Now, I read somewhere, hopefully not on Rhett's website, that your parents discourage you from listening to popular music. So what was behind that? I would say that my parents... Because you got piano lessons and voice lessons early on. Music was a big part of your childhood.

Well, not voice lessons, but I did take some piano part of your childhood not voice lessons but i did i did take some piano lessons i was never particularly good at them but i took a few years of piano um i would say that you know my parents were fairly strict i mean i you know being school teachers and i think seeing other people's kids and whatever i don't know what the motivations were but you know i i'd say they definitely had a vision of prim and proper Mary Poppins kids. That that was kind of, you know, their sense of a well put together family. And, you know, was there any religious motivation behind that? I don't think it was religious conservatism.

We were certainly I was raised Methodist Christian. We went to church, certainly. conservatism because we were certainly i was raised methodist christian we went to to church certainly but i think it was almost kind of like like when i was a kid i i wasn't allowed to play with uh violent action figures couldn't we couldn't have uh weapons we couldn't so i think like he man or something yeah i actually i remember he man and shira uh from when i was like three four years old i remember i i i wasn't allowed to play with action figures that had weapons or G.I. Joes or that type of thing. I don't know.

I mean, I think it was something that they meant well. You know, they're like, okay, don't have your kid play with G.I. Joes so they don't become violent or whatever. I mean, I think there are so many things you do when you parent that it's like you just kind of make the best call that you are able to make at that point in your life. And, you know, certainly there have been times in my past where maybe I would be a little bit angry about some of the more hurtful restrictions or whatever, because you're right. I mean, I didn't feel free to listen to a lot of popular music growing up. you're right. I mean, I didn't feel free to listen to a lot of popular music growing up. I felt, and part of that, again, was what I described earlier, this very internal pressure I had to always be older, always seem more proper, always seem more reserved, always seem more

adults than even the adults around me. And so I think that also kind of fed into this sense of, well, you know, don't listen to, you know, oh, who's popular then? You know, Nirvana, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, et cetera. So you were raised in a pop music vacuum? I think that's fair to say. I mean, so what would you pull from for a chocolate rain then? Well, and in fact, what's interesting is I was raised in a pop music vacuum. But then the Internet came along when I was 12 or 13 years old.

And around 13, 14, I started being able to download MP3s. And the Internet was this wonderful place where it's like I realized I could do anything. And my parents couldn't see what I was doing. And so it kind of became this second life, so to speak, which is why sometimes I think I relate so much to kids in the digital generation now because, I mean, it's all like crazy with social media and like kids going to sleep with their phones and whatever. So what did you download? You say that almost suggestively. Innocent bunnies and unicorns. Music, though.

What music? No. I remember the first MP3 I ever downloaded was Will Smith's Men in Black. Yes, okay. Here comes the men in black. Galaxy defenders. The good guys who are in black.

Remember that in case you have faith in me. I mean, surely your parents wouldn't have been upset with that, right? I don't know. You've got to be violent to defend a galaxy. I don't actually know. I realize that I have a lot of perceptions, I think, especially when I was young. I think I would perceive people very literally when I was young. And so, you know, someone would say something to me once, including my parents, like, OK, you're not allowed to do this.

And like, I would remember that four or five, six, seven years later. I've always had kind of that pictographic type of memory where it's like if you say something. Kind of that pictographic type of memory where it's like if you say something, and I think I was brutal like this as a kid, you know, where I'd be 17, 18 years old remembering something that my mom just said to me offhand when I was 12. And I'd be like, oh, wait, you actually did say that. And overcompliant, like proper. Absolutely. That is the best word, overcompliant. I was an overcompliant pleaser who very much took what was said to me literally. I remember one time I was just watching TV,

just watching Full House, which is a fairly innocent show when I was 12 years old, and my mom was just saying, I don't like the dialogue between the father and the daughter, and that was a little bit not what she thought was appropriate. There probably were Full House episodes like that. They seem like friends, not like a parent. Or just, I mean, it was just some scene

where something was said. It was something where it's like, I think my mom would have said it at all times. She was being sassy. Yeah, and she probably forgot about it the next day, but I remember years later, I was 16, 17, almost 18 years old, creeping up on adulthood and still having internalized exactly what my mom said on that day as though it was gospel.

And I think it took me a while to get over- To watch Full House? Well, to watch Full House. I guess it's probably on Netflix now. I mean, have you watched it ever since then? I actually haven't. I actually stopped watching it at that point and I watched it. We should have a marathon. Full house marathon tonight.

No, that actually took the full house out of me. I think that constitutes torture in this day and age. Oh, it's great. It's still great. It's still a whole tub. The two, spoiler alert, the youngest girl is really twins. I know, I know.

Bring the other one in i i kind of figured that out eventually but you know i mean i uh i guess we're kind of hitting on different points in my childhood i would say you know the the extent to which i was extremely cerebral and extremely um you know extremely pleaser uh it kind of resulted in a period of my life from about 12 to 19 where I was just, I had such high anxiety that I literally did not speak in my house. I

retreated to the internet. I, you know, kind of had, you know, I played games on the internet, played a lot of Star Siege. It was kind of like MechWarrior. Played a lot of, you know, did things with my online squad there. But when you walked in the front door. I did not speak.

I literally, I. Were your parents worried? Did they, was there an intervention of any kind? Oh, yeah. I mean, I certainly saw plenty of therapists. And, you know, there was kind of that, you know, the efforts to kind of tentatively break the ice. But I don't think they actually understood the rationale for-

Well, how would they characterize it though? Because that's one of the things I wanted to touch on too is since a lot of your career has been characterized by the way people interpret you. Absolutely. So how was that happening at that point? Like, did you begin to pick up on how you were being interpreted by friends, how you were being interpreted by your family, your parents?

And how would you characterize that? How I was being interpreted? I mean, I would say that if I go back to my 12, 13, 14-year-old brain, I definitely felt very, very parented and very, um watched very very sheltered sheltered and living in a panopticon where i felt like every breath every you know step i took was kind of thought of deeply and monitored and um even though you seem to now describe it as more of a product of your own brain more than your the way your parents it was a it was kind of a an unfortunate interaction between your parents being protective but the way your brain works absolutely and i can say that because my brother and sister did not have that reaction and they it is the same set of parents um uh but yeah i mean I it's funny people ask a

lot it's an oddly common question what was it like when your voice got deeper what was it like when your voice cracked did your parents freak out and you know the truth of that story is yeah I was selectively mutant agoraphobic for about seven years of my life as an adolescent and really did not

communicate like that in that way. And it wasn't really until I moved out and with my parents' support, they're amazing parents, graciously supporting me as I moved out and went to college and kind of had my own adult life, that then I kind of started to get a perspective and, you know. Well, how did you, I mean, how does that happen? How do you go from struggling in this way and even characterizing it as agoraphobic. Absolutely, I was.

To then going to college because usually when someone is struggling to that level they go to maybe a community college, they live at home, how did that happen? Indeed that is exactly what I did. At first I went to community college, I lived at home. Eventually we all kind of moved from the Midwest out to Seattle.

Lived in an apartment there, and I went to community college. Transferred down... How did you tell them where you wanted to go? Did you email them? Or you spoke occasionally? You know, my sister was actually very helpful at that point. When I started to be like 18, 19,

she was kind of the intervention kind of... Because, I mean, she was moving on with her life and whatever. She's much older. She's kind of, you know what? You know, clearly there's some miscommunication that's happened between you and and and mom and dad. And maybe it's time you kind of an adult now. Let's evaluate this. And I am blessed to have such wonderful people in my family who have been supportive, both my parents and my older siblings, who've really been there for me in those moments where I kind of needed that type of tap on the shoulder. Like, hey, can we move on from this? And I think I eventually did. So mechanically, how did that happen? Well, it happened. What was so interesting is I lived in Capitol Hill in Seattle when I was 19. This was right when 9-11 happened. And Capitol Hill is a very, very politically active, very kind of eclectic, artistic type community.

I'd say that's the period of my life where I kind of started to, I really warmed up to, I went to community college there. I was in different independent media movements. I think that kind of post 9-11 lead up to the Iraq war period was when I kind of started to look at the Internet as something where, OK, is this something where we can attempt social change or at least kind of create a dialogue? And of course, you know, it really wasn't successful and you didn't have social media. You didn't really have the critical mass to do that with it. But I remember because eventually I ended up studying social change and the relationship between performance and social change when I pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. And I think it was kind of that moment living at Capitol Hill where there were all sorts of different types of politics and marches and things going on that I kind of both came out of my shell that I grew up in and became acclimated to different

types of people. And was that because those movements usually involve actually getting to know and interact with people? Is that what kind of drew you out? Like, oh, I'm into this movement or I want to go be a part of this group. Like, how do you begin to have those interactions with people where you start feeling like, okay, no, I can be social.

I can speak. Like, do you remember a moment um i don't know if i remember a moment i mean so much of my agoraphobia and not uh feeling safe outside was a fear that my parents would like when i was like 17 16 18 a fear that my parents would drive by and see me being normal or see me doing something that they would not approve of and i literally clamped up and and shut down to the for that reason i like i didn't go outside i was afraid like uh something that they would not approve of. And I literally clamped up and shut down for that reason. I didn't go outside. I was afraid that I would be outed, so to speak,

by being seen by that panopticon. And I think at some point, my parents were so good to me when I was in the academy. A lot of kids, when they're 18, 19, they're out of the house to support themselves. You know, my parents were very generous. I mean, they they they paid for me to be in an apartment. I was there by myself. They paid for me to be independent. They kind of knew what I needed in order to transition into adulthood. And they gave it to me. And I was just I was very lucky because not every person who came from where I came from has that level of support and that level of just dogging this and saying, hey, this is how we're going to do this.

And, you know, it was effective. I kind of discovered who I was or started to discover who I was in that period of time when I was 19, 20 years old. And what was that discovery? I think it's still ongoing. It's still ongoing, you know, 12, 13 years later. But just being able, I mean, sometimes I uh it was just walking around capitol hill one day and capitol hill was in that at that period of time was a neighborhood we could literally just be walking around you see a march you see like protesters and please it was just like you know marching up in an organized march and uh i remember uh one time

uh i was just walking outside uh seattle Central Community College where I was going to school. And they were having what they self-called, this is their title, you know, they call it the Dyke March. You know, celebrating, you know, that community and whatnot. And I had no idea what being transgendered or lesbian or anything was or a Dyke March. But I was just like, oh, wait, it's a march. And you were in. Let me do it. And so literally I was in. I was just like, oh, wait, it's a march. And you were in. Let me do it. And so literally, I was in.

I was marching in, you know. At that period of time, you know, they were anti-administration. I have this memory of, like, you know, shouting crazily, being 19 years old on the march through the streets of Capitol Hill in Seattle, just screaming, pussy power, yes. Bush power, no. Pussy power, yes. That's literally what the channel, the Marshalls, was like, I didn't know who I was.

I was a 19-year-old kid. I'm like, okay, fine. It's a Nike Marshalls. A little bit of that compliance thing still kicking in. A little bit. At least you were out in the open. I was out in the open. I think I kind of started to feel a little bit more free or at least not constantly

monitored for the first time and uh what's weird and we'll get to this later is how tase on day blowing up and coming into um you know i mean i hate to say it but it is kind of worldwide fame i walk down the street in london and people will be like, are you that guy? Right. I can't escape it. Kind of brought that panopticon back. Oh, wow. That I had grown up with and all of the psychology and all of the reluctance and all of the issues that are kind of involved in that sense of always being monitored, it's back again.

And we can talk about that. Connect the dots of how we got there and then we'll explore that. So you're marching in the Dyke March. That's their name, not ours. And then you go home and you write Chocolate Rain about that experience. Okay, no, no, no. That's what Chocolate Rain is about.

There's an eight-year gap here that we actually need to cover. Yeah, do it. Well, I kind of already covered it. Like I was in Capitol Hill in Seattle for a year and a half, moved down to finish my undergrad to Olympia, Washington, the capital city of Washington.

Beautiful, evergreen state college. Very evergreen if you ever go there. One of the most beautiful landscapes anywhere, especially when it's sunny. It is sometimes overcast there, but a beautiful place in the Pacific Northwest. And while I was there at Evergreen, I had an advisor who said that he had gotten his Ph.D. in American Studies at Bowling Greens. And he suggested that I apply to American Studies programs

because I just kind of had this assumption when I finished my undergrad that, hey, I've been in school 16 years. Why don't I stay in school another seven and get a PhD? I think it was kind of that part of the boy in me who was like Lieutenant Commander Data, who just wanted to be smarter to be smarter. And so basically I pursued a PhD for all of the wrong reasons.

Not because I was super, super passionate about a project that needed the solution of being researched, but because I just wanted a gosh darn PhD. So you got a Bowling Green. No. I did listen to the advisor who got his PhD in American Studies at Bowling Green, however, and I applied to American Studies programs because they allow you in some cases to be more self-directed. They kind of you study history, but also mix in humanities and put other people on your committee who kind of tailor your research interest to you. And the way he describes it to me is like, you know, Adam, you know, I went to my American Studies PhD. I didn't even know what I wanted to do until the second or third

year. I'm like, oh, that's great. I have no idea what I want to do. I just want to get a PhD. Why don't I apply for that? And so I applied like six, seven places, Emory, Communications, the University of Washington, et cetera. University of Minnesota accepted me with a full four years of funding. And I got a fellowship the first year which meant I didn't have to be a teaching assistant which was cool so I moved to Minneapolis and

to be honest I thought that in that period of life I would still be passionate about social movements and social change but I kind of found that when I moved away from Capitol Hill in Seattle, and also, you know, this is 2004 now. So we're kind of moving away from that historical moment of post 9-11 and lead up to, you know, everything that followed. I never really found my footing in any similar type of community like that in Minneapolis. And so I didn't really have a research interest, so to speak.

I, you know, pursuing the PhD, I would take the coursework, learn how to do ethnographic, you know, anthropological research, learn how to do historical research. But I was surrounded by people who had passionate life projects that they were, you know, say, you know, they'd grown up American Indian and they were researching American Indian land rights or it was part of or, you know, they grew up identifying as queer and, you know, they're studying, you know, sexuality and feminism and all sorts of things. And you didn't have something like that.

I didn't have anything like that. So did you feel it seems like what you're saying is that you felt different? I absolutely felt different. And, you know, one of the ways I responded to that difference is I continued my lifelong music hobby. I'd never been a serious musician, but I've always been a hobbyist musician, kind of doing it for fun. And I would start going to open mics in Minneapolis around 2006, dragging sometimes my 40-pound stage piano with a 30-pound amp.

I remember one cafe I went to, which is in a different part of the city. It was the middle of winter in Minneapolis. I literally had alligator cables tying a 30-pound amp to a 40-pound stage piano on one of those little airport hand cart things. Yeah. And I was dragging it through the snow.

On the sidewalk? On the sidewalk. Drug it in through the snow, left this little lake of water in this cafe that had maybe 10 people in it. And so it takes me 10 minutes to set up. Why didn't you just get a keyboard? No, I had a keyboard.

I'm dragging the stage piano. Oh, stage piano is a keyboard. Yeah, stage piano is a keyboard. But it's still big. It's still big. But I basically remember I'm taking forever to set up. I'm playing two songs there, singing for 10 people, five of whom are not paying attention,

the other five of whom really don't care. And then putting it back together and going back into the shame five of whom really don't care. And then, you know, putting it back together and going back, you know, into the shame of my car and going back home. And then YouTube comes along. At this point before YouTube, the people who knew you, your friends, what was their interaction with you?

What was their assessment of you? Did they consider you different or you know uh adam is you know he's a weird guy i love him for it was it that kind of thing i imagine that people have found me to be unique my entire life but you never i have never felt like I could have just that everyday blending in. And I think that's one reason I withdrew as a kid, because I wanted that so, so badly, especially as an isolated teen. growing up into college, as a teen, you know, I mean, gosh, I so wanted to be just, you know, a scene kid who was, you know, like listening to Korn and No Fear and all the bands there and, you know, just kind of like hanging out and having my posse,

having my crew. On the inside. On the inside. This is who I just wanted to blend in. I so badly wanted to blend in. And, you know, it just never was, it wasn't in the cards. You know, partly for reason of my parents, partly for reason of who I was, I've just always stuck out. But you're, I mean, if you're saying if we were to travel back in time and meet you on the

street and ask you, what is your life goal, you would have said blend in, yet you're dragging a huge keyboard down in the snow. So almost inspired, like going on instinct. This is the core conflict of my existence. You are highlighting the core inner conflict of Taze on Day, the double identity that has never resolved itself. So YouTube comes along.

So YouTube comes along along i get sick of dragging my keyboard or just playing at open mics where nobody's listening i'm like okay wait youtube is there i could just make videos in my living room and uh maybe reach a larger audience and be five or ten people listening to me at open mics so is the first video on your channel now the first one you upload no no no no no no okay the the videos on my channel now, the first one you upload. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. The videos on my channel have been very mercilessly pruned.

Cause Canon and Z original classical arrangement eight years ago is, and then you have Love, an original song by Kubi featuring Tay Zonday. And then the third one that's still public is Chocolate Rain. Yes. 101.5 million views. First of all, the way

I started on YouTube, January 2007, because I was still known as Adam Bonner at this point, and I said, I need to come up with an alter ego. I want it to be something that's not in use by anybody else. And so I kind of Googled different

variations. Why? Why need an alter ego? Because at that point... I mean, you're not a rapper. No. At that point, I believed my career would be to be a university professor where I would be publishing papers. And I wanted that to have its own Google life.

I wanted my career as an academic, as a researcher, to have its own life separate from my music career. And so I... So few people calculate the beginning of a YouTube channel, especially in 2007, to that degree. Oh, and even more so, I wanted a name that if people heard it, they would know how it was spelled if it was set in conversation, so that if they heard Tay Zonday, they would know how it was spelled if it was set in conversation so that if they heard Tay Zonday they would know

oh TayZonday.com that I didn't want it to have an ambiguous spelling and so I think I was just entering different options on Google like Ray Monday and I entered Tay Zonday in quotes on Google and it got zero

results. Really? And I'm like boom! I'm like, boom, I'm gonna take youtube.com. Just off the top of your head. MySpace.com. It doesn't mean Zonday and Tay don't mean anything in another language or? No, no they were.

Was it inspired by something or? It was created as an alter ego. Like the words were just like top of mind, like I'm just saying. Tay Zonday. Flay, cron. I liked the way it rolled. Flambe. I liked the way it rolled off the tip of the tongue.

It does. The funny thing is, is you just said you wanted it to be something that when people heard it in a conversation, they would know how to look it up. But the first time I heard it. You thought it was Tay-zon. I thought it was Tay-zon-day.

Yeah, that's the thing I wasn't thinking of. So it's kind of like if I could go back. But you knew how to spell it. And if it was Tay-zon-day.com. It probably would have been the same thing. You would have still gotten it. If you went to YouTube.com and said Tay-zon back. But you knew how to spell it. And if it was Taysonday.com. It probably would have been the same thing. You would have still gotten there. There are no spaces. If it was YouTube.com says Taysonday, you still would have gotten there.

You still would have gotten there. But yeah, some people come, hey, Taysond. I'm like, okay, whatever. And that's almost kind of something I, because, you know, I blew up so fast so quickly that it kind of didn't make a difference. Right. Yeah, it didn't matter. Taysonday brings up Adam Bonner.

Adam Bonner brings up Tay Zonday now. So you created the channel, and then what? The first video I uploaded on YouTube was my singing, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, in the range of Paul Robeson. And so it was down like, in the range of Paul Robeson. And so it was down like, Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home,

on the keyboard. I love that. The feedback I got on YouTube was characteristically very honest. Kind of like, my ears are bleeding. Have you ever tried, like, maybe you want to try Australian throat singing? You sound like a frog, Tay.

This is weird. And maybe sometimes people... And these are friends, because when you start YouTube, who's watching? Well, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, and occasionally other YouTubers. There was some organic reach. Okay, okay. What you could do is you could add people as friends. Oh, yeah. And then after you added them could do is you could add people as friends. Oh yeah, boy we do that.

And then after you added them as friends, you could invite them to subscribe to your channel. Just mass send the video out to all your friends. In fact, funny story, early 2007, guess who was in my first 15 YouTube friends that I added? Let me guess. Yes. Well now that you're looking at me, I'm thinking us.

Might it be Rhett and Link? No. Oh, now that you're looking at me, I'm thinking us. Might it be Red Link? No. Oh, dang it. Could please be us. No. Kid Raul. Justin Bieber. Oh, really?

Yeah, he actually started. He had a YouTube channel. We were hoping it was us. No, it was- Justin Bieber. Yeah, and he was just a YouTube channel at that point in life. You know, just before Justin Bieber, he was that YouTube channel. And his mom was like, hey, you know, my kid is really great.

My 12-year-old is really great at singing Michael Jackson. Playing drums. Yeah. And he was a great singer. But it was just kind of a funny tidbit of YouTube history. Do you think he saw Swing Low back then? Like you were seeing him and he was seeing you? I'd like to think so.

I'd have to ask him. But I probably did invite him to subscribe. But in any case, that's kind of when I realized that in a couple other experiments that the super low bass range probably

was not going to be my ticket to popularity on YouTube. And I actually started singing things an octave higher in the barit bass range probably was not going to be my ticket to popularity on YouTube. And I actually started singing things an octave higher in the baritone range, which is where Chocolate Rain and some of the other songs that eventually reached popularity. Which to give it yet, I mean, you've already demonstrated it, but you know,

people already kind of, I think the layman already thinks of Chocolate Rain and the rest of your music as being very bassy is how they would describe it to begin with, even though it's technically a baritone. Yeah. You know, you approached YouTube with such a confidence of success

and such a level of calculation. I would say, you know, when you say, well, I've got to have an alter ego because I'm gonna be a successful PhD, and then I'm going to be successful on YouTube under a name that you need to be able to Google and find because that's part of the success. And I'm even going to write an explanation for the actions, assuming people will be speculating about it,

yet the calculation didn't extend to the things that actually made it such an explosion. Wouldn't you agree? I completely agree with that assessment. So it wasn't like nothing was calculated. A lot was calculated. And that's one of the many things I'm finding fascinating here was the level of calculation that then set up

everything that you could never have planned to be so brilliant. Absolutely, there was a tremendous amount of calculation involved in laying the ground for what then happened spontaneously. And so tell us how it happened. I mean, the eruption. What was the experience for you?

Like, how did you even know it was happening? Because it was delayed. The video was out there for a while. You were getting feedback. People were probably saying the same thing about Chocolate Rain. They said about Love and the other videos, right? And like I foreshadowed earlier, I don't know if it'll be edited out, but Chocolate Rain was uploaded in April of 2007.

It got a little bit of traction you know maybe 12 000 views from you know the front page feature the other video but it largely sat around it was maybe at 30 000 views by uh june of 2007 and i think in early july someone posted it on dig.com the social book marketing so basically read it but back then. And it was at the top of dig.com for maybe a week. And the views doubled to about 60,000 in that time. Someone saw it on dig.com, posted it on 4chan, and then they just thought it was hilarious. And it kind of became a meme there, so to speak.

At this time, what were you doing? Yeah, so you were following this, I'm assuming. You saw the views going up. I saw the views going up. I didn't know any of this until afterwards. I was basically, what was I doing that summer? Was I a teaching assistant over the summer? I'm trying to remember summer of 2007.

I think I may have been off that summer. I can't exactly remember, but I know I was basically living the life of a PhD student and a nerd in my living room who just did music as a hobby. So when it happened, like even the step one, which is, you know, dig, going from 30 to 60,000 views,

you knew this was happening, you can see people's comments. What's going through your mind at that time? Is it, people get this, people like my music, or is it, whoa, they're making these observations? What really hit me that something was happening was when there was a 4chan thread where they tried to prank call tom green and successfully prank called tom green in his web show that he did from his living room at the time and then the caller just breaks out singing chocolate rain and then i see tom green kind

of reacting and uh the very next day it's featured featured on Carson Daily, his late night show. And then it just becomes a national news story. And perhaps, you know, every way there is to message me on YouTube, I have a contact form on my website. People were trying to contact me to get in on this news story of this video that is going viral. And I remember the first two weeks I did perhaps 30 radio interviews, all of them terrible, because I just had no sense of being a public figure on that level. But why? I mean, just in the privacy of your own mind, what was your explanation for the explosion? My explanation was that this is what it's like to have 15 minutes of fame. just in the privacy of your own mind, what was your explanation for the explosion?

My explanation was that this is what it's like to have 15 minutes of fame. This is what it's like to be a national news story. But specifically, because now, you've already articulated this, you understand exactly why it blew up. But at the time, as it was blowing up, how did that realization come about

and what were you thinking in that first interview when somebody talked to you? Unfortunately, this is still on YouTube, I think, somewhere. No, what was my first interview? It was with, of all people, Opie and Anthony in New York. It was the first radio interview I ever did. And I followed a conversation about what percentage of the ocean is composed of whale semen. And, you know, when you're doing the phone interview, they have like the segment. You can hear it.

You can hear it. You can hear what's going on. And it's like, well, you know, like up to 20% of the ocean might be composed of whale junk. Oh, and here's the guy next. You're not going to believe it, but he's blowing up on this YouTube thing. We've got the guy. It's Taze on the chocolate or whatever. And I remember I was very self-deprecating in the first interviews. What really stands out about most of the interviews I've done about Chocolate Rain is people try to peg me into turning it into a polemic interview. They say, well, clearly this is making a political statement, Tay. And is there a deeper meaning?

Is there a, are you trying to say something like that? And I have always shied away from being that so-called, you know, Malcolm X figure or polemic political figure with chocolate rain as the basis, only because while obviously there is a political message or there is a social justice message to it, people who experience it, they come from all sorts of different experiences. Someone will say, hey, my two-year-old can't stop singing this at bedtime. Hey, I love the way you move away from the mic to breathe in. Or this is just, this was so funny. We just passed this around the office at work. And I want to validate those experiences. And then maybe 10, 20% of people are actually

listening to the lyrics and saying, okay, you know, there's a deeper critique. There's a deeper social message here. Kanye was very nice. I think he shouted it out in a song saying that Tay Zonday was deep. And was that your intention in the lyrics? Did you want to talk about that? I absolutely did. And I think, especially when it comes to social justice, people are turned off by polemics. People don't want to be preached to. And so I sing about what I can't say about. But summarize it for us. Well, I think I just did.

I always say the question is more important than the answer in terms of if chocolate rain can get people asking the question, hey, what does chocolate rain mean? Then we are in an interrogative space. But. We have moved from having no conversation to at least there being a question. But I mean, I understand that, you know, rock jock radio DJs are gonna ask that question because they wanna know what the hell it means,

so to speak, but didn't they really just want you to be weird so they could laugh at you i mean oh absolutely and i mean that was a really um it was a hard aspect of the way in which i blew up because let's be honest i blew up for the incidental comedy in some regards of chocolate rain for the unintended comedy and there would be people asking in the comments can i laugh at this guards of Chocolate Rain for the unintended comedy. And there would be people asking in the comments, can I laugh at this? Not knowing whether or not I intended it seriously. And I mean, my response to that has always been, hey, if I do something and you want to laugh at it, and it makes your day a little bit brighter, makes your life a little bit brighter, go ahead.

That's fine. But I think the problem when I did interviews and appearances and sometimes in that period of my life is that people would expect me to show up and do that deliberately. And as we've already covered, I get into trouble when I try to be funny deliberately. Yeah, you weren't trying. When I try to do deliberate comedy, it doesn't work. I just have to be me. But I'm really interested in the realization. You know, there's a more stark example of this. There's a guy, there's a few documentaries about

called Jesco White. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. This is this guy. He's called Jesco White, the mountain dancer, a guy in West Virginia who kind of rose to fame in the 80s or the 90s. He was a very interesting personality and had like this alter ego that was Elvis Presley and stuff.

And he kind of rose to national fame, was on Oprah, and it was in that moment of him taking that first trip, so to speak, to Hollywood where he started realizing that people were laughing at him, and he basically just had an implosion. It sounds like- He was very sincere in his mountain dancing. Yeah, it sounds like because you came up

a different way through the internet, you got to see people's interpretation of your work from the very beginning. So it wasn't a surprise that people found it funny. No, you know, what was funny is I actually found the hate on the internet refreshing at first. And I say this because when you sing at open mics in Minneapolis, I love Minnesota, I love Minnesotans, they're not really that confrontational. Like, you perform in New York,

New Yorkers will tell you exactly what they think about you. Like, you say, hey, how did I do? They're like, hey, you know, it was okay, maybe not my thing, whatever, you know, whatever. In Minnesota, you never get that type of feedback performing live. They're always kind of like, uh, that was nice, keep going with it.

So I came to YouTube, like, oh, that was nice. Keep going with it. So I came to YouTube like starving for honest feedback about who I did and what I was. And so I certainly got it. I certainly, you know, people are unrestrained on the Internet. really the question that it segues into is uh what happened after chocolate rain blew up and who did i want to be is that right uh did i i've always had this struggle of okay um there's part of me who wants to be quote unquote uh a a serious actor serious entertainer series whatever you're taking seriously um i love dramatic acting i love being being on sets. I love playing the more... Naturally, I would actually play the role of authority, the governor, the senator, the chief of police, et cetera. The things working against that are, A, I look way too young. No one would ever cast me for that right now. And B, you know, I think there's also kind of like the,

there's that historical aspect where it's like, you know, chocolate rain blew up because people were just entertained by it. And it's not a type of entertainment

that I was able to reproduce deliberately. To calculate. And I think, I mean, you started earlier in the conversation talking about, well, the dearth of where are my videos on YouTube, where I haven't been uploading on YouTube. I have, by the way, been on Twitch a lot.

I'm like on Twitch five, six hours a night at twitch.tv slash Taysondagames. Taysondagames. But I think one of the struggles that I had with YouTube over the past seven years is I could not reproduce the entertainment value of Chocolate Rain as deliberate comedy. It was incidental. It was just me being me and honestly being me as nobody in the sense of being nobody and just screwing around and saying, hey, I'll put this up and whatever happens will happen. And it's almost kind of like that classic Garden of Eden story where it's like before Eve bit the apple,

she did not know she was naked. And suddenly, you know, I blow up with chocolate rain and I'm on Jimmy Kimmel and I do the Dr. Pepper video. And it's just this Energizer bunny that keeps going and going and going. I'm parodied on South Park in 2008. The next year, I won a YouTube award, won a Webby award, do stuff with TurboTax and kind of incidentally become this odd icon who is tied to the Internet. Because even today, people who don't remember Chocolate Rain and don't remember the name Tay Zonday, they'll stare at me from across, say, the DMV and say, you're that guy from the internet.

You did that video. From the internet, yeah. From the internet. You are the internet. Yeah, I somehow kind of became- In people's minds. An iconography of the internet and internet success and blowing up on the internet and what have you.

But I have to go back a little bit before we keep moving forward and how did you build on or move forward from Chocolate Rain is just, you talk about the moment of realization when Eve eats the apple. Absolutely. But for you, is that, what is the realization? Is it, you seem to say it was what I did

that made me so successful I didn't do intentionally. But I wanna ask, was there also a realization that you bite the apple and then it's, hold on, people are laughing at me, not with me because I wasn't intending to be funny. So here I am on Kimmel, who am I, just so you can laugh at me some more? I mean, was there a struggle there?

How do you play that? How do you play that? And what's the conclusion for yourself? This is the ongoing struggle of my career. Because you have entertainers who build successful careers being laughed at. Carrot Top, you know. Yeah, but he's a comedian. He's cracking jokes.

He's cracking jokes. My point is, like, that is a distinct career path. And, like, I think that has always kind of been the crossroads of my career even when chocolate rain was blowing up it's like i have nothing against uh hypothetically the career path or people who take the career path of being laughed at and uh but when it's you there's a moment where you might be hurt by that or you can either harness it be hurt by it or i would assume both i think there was some of both. I think here is what I, you know, hindsight is always 20-20.

And I'm not going to say that I have regrets. But I will say that, you know, you look at what Miranda Sings has done. She's very successful. She's kind of taken, and, you know, that's not her real name. But she created the Miranda Sings character as this over-the-top character to be laughed at. And she's actually an extremely, extremely talented singer. But Miranda Sings is the obnoxious, you know, put lipstick on and do it and do the whole, you know, get internet views show to a brilliant business plan. And in retrospect, because I had this inner conflict that you're describing, I didn't embrace Tay Zonday like, say, a Miranda Sings and just take it and run with it and say, hey, yeah, you know, I'm the guy who moves away from the reality that the way to grow it in that moment was to just accept being laughed at and create Tase on Day as this alter ego of being laughed at.

And but even then, I think what happened instead is that it kind of became this odd thing that I wanted to personally identify my work. Of course it did, because the difference between you and Miranda is that Miranda was created by Colleen. I mean, we talked to her on the show. Yeah. But it was you expressing yourself and then you find that people reacted in this way.

And of course it's a lot more complicated for you in that moment, in that volcanic explosion of viral video to figure out people are interpreting me. Yeah, it's a moniker, you made up a name, but you were just, it was you. Absolutely, it was not a deliberate character at all. So was there a moment of biting the apple? Oh my gosh, they're laughing at me.

I don't know if it was a moment of, I don't know if I can take it on a particular moment. I would say what I knew from the experiences that I had in the summer of 2007 and the fall thereafter. Because I had a lot of, you know, pretty intense experiences. I mean, I was opening for Girl Talk at First Avenue,

the most famous club in Minneapolis. You know, the Dr. Pepper video that got huge. It was, of course, you know, kind of a very different portrayal of me in an exaggerated way. And on Kimmel. I mean, it's amazing.

And on Kimmel, and the front page of Sunday's All Times, and da-da-da-da-da. You know, I knew that I needed a lot more time to figure out who I was than the moment of being hot would allow. Because everyone was telling me when I was in that moment, and I think even for a week or two, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you look at the history of Google trending topics, chocolate rain today is like number one, number two for like a week or two in July of 2007.

Everyone was telling me in that moment, it's like, okay, you're hot now, whatever you're doing now, this moment may never come again in your life. So there is a tremendous pressure on me just to go from being a nerd in my living room to suddenly. And by the way, I was still in graduate school at this point. I decided not to drop out. I still thought I'd be finishing the PhD, so I tried to mix them both. You know, there was a tremendous pressure to try and make the most of this moment. And I think my response in that aha moment was just to realize, hey, I'm not going to be able to be the person I need to be to take the best advantage of this moment of being hot.

I'm just not going to be there. And that's okay. I'm just going to keep trying to be me and explore being me. And I probably have many more years of doing that to figure out who I am and who I want to become. And that's exactly what I did. I stayed in grad school. I continued uploading YouTube occasionally and kind of did the same thing. And to some extent, that's why I came to YouTube. I came to it as an experiment to get feedback on who I was and learn to be who I was. Well, it's almost like you found yourself in a place where I would call this an impossible position to try to calculate a miscalculation. I love that. To become- I love that. To become intentional about something

that was unintentional. Now the fascinating thing is that you have, you have made a career that was based upon that, you know, the biting the, not the biting the apple, but the raining of the chocolate. And then the eventually kind of realizing what that was that was happening. And how has that unfolded and what does it mean for you as an entertainer now?

Well, here's the silver lining of having a lot of people laugh at you. And what I kind of realized, and this is maybe how I made peace with it, is that if you just have exposure of any type, whatever type of exposure that is, assuming it's not negative exposure, you know, people laughing, it is not necessarily negative exposure. will look at that and they'll take it seriously and they'll try to just because you got in front of their eyeballs you will have an opportunity to develop a more serious relationship with them and you will have an opportunity to then kind of get to be hey wait okay yeah i realize you're laughing now okay that was funny but when you get to know me i'd say that knowing me in person

is a pretty different experience than just watching Chocolate Rain and laughing at it and that's kind of been what drove my career is I would post content on YouTube, there is always that YouTube audience that saw it for whatever reason

I've tried posting more serious things on YouTube there is a smaller audience for. There is a smaller audience for that. There's a smaller audience, for example, for my singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow from Wizard of Oz. I think I did a decent job with that. Bring Him Home from Les Mis.

I've done more serious stuff on my YouTube channel. And I think I've done it semi-competently. But it is true, the audience for that has never but it is true the audience for that has never been as large as the audience for my singing, call me maybe in a deep voice and being entertaining in that way. I mean, yeah.

I mean, certainly I've questioned with just conversations with you over the years when we'd brush shoulders at an event or something and be like, well, but is he affecting his voice? And when he goes home and he's like just hanging out or like going through a drive-through, that it's like, okay, he's, it goes up another octave. I mean, he's just, you know, there is that question. I'm just faking my voice.

Not three. This is my real, I can't. But I mean, I took your explanation of being that kid who wanted to be older to be in that old soul that it might have been that your voice was something that maybe you've settled into something that was an affectation of wanting to be older at a younger age.

Did you talk like this before YouTube? It's funny when you say talk like this because when i wake up when i wake up in the morning i don't think of me as like someone who talks like this right that's my point like that like that describe what this is and that what is they and that that that's the question what is the this of tase on day uh talk like this um uh did i talk like this before my voice was deep? Probably. I mean, I would assume I was always cerebral, intellectual, reflective, aloof to some extent.

Well, I don't mean to go back to the shallow end of the pool here. I'm not trying to do that by going back to the voice. I was just acknowledging that I think people just, you know, they wanna be fascinated to a certain degree and then they just wanna believe that, oh, he affects his voice or that's the simplest solution. That's the more entertaining solution, explanation.

So you're almost- But knowing you, the message is this is me, guys. I am a person and I like to say things and have thoughts and have conversations and i am actually and i'm not interested in that i'm not a cartoon not a cartoon and i think you're right there's there is that is kind of the struggle that i've always had on youtube it's not just a struggle of being taken seriously but it kind of is uh For whatever reason, me in my natural state, on camera as I present myself on YouTube, people don't know whether to believe that is real. They don't know whether to believe that's a real person whom they can have a relationship with.

They can't imagine when they watch Chocolate Rain sitting next to me on the bus. How does that make you feel about opportunities that are going to continue to come for the rest of your life? For you to be that guy that people laugh at? On the internet. You know, I just like to say that I am passionate about working. I don't really complain about the context because I'm old enough and wise enough to know that any type of exposure, including good natured humor, is exposure that, you know, if 10,000 people watch it, maybe two people will be watching that who then initiate a serious relationship where they get to know me. And maybe that's a work relationship. Maybe that's something that's very serendipitous. And so exposure is ultimately king. And the money's still green, right? I mean, I guess you said, I mean, I guess starring in a couple episodes of what is it on Adult Swim now, the Jack and Triumph show, which is very fun, very fun to be on. So I

love acting. And like if I had a choice what to do with my career I love being on sets I love the lights the camera having a crew yeah in my face I love being cast and and and embodying a role uh I just I love it to tears and one reason I think I love it to tears is because I'm I'm I can let go in a fictional space in a way that I cannot let go in real life. And I feel more real acting in a fictional context than I actually do with real people in real life. And that harkens back to the cartoonification of Tézande, to this sense that when I am actually real in real life and it's not an acting set,

somehow I'm taken as this cartoon. Somehow I'm taken as something that is fantasy and not reality. And so it's almost like when I'm in fantasy, when I am on set, when I am acting, when I am able to actually be a character, I feel more real and more incisive and more on top of my game as a human being than I do anywhere else, including in real life. Well, that's interesting. We wish you the best in acting and everything else that you do, but we appreciate you being real here.

I think you certainly have been real here. We do appreciate that. So thanks for creating this Ear Biscuit. Thanks for that. Thank you so much for having me. And there you have it, our chocolate biscuit. Chocolate covered biscuit. With Tay Zondik.

Dipped and covered and smothered in chocolate rain. Let Tay know that you appreciated his ear biscuit with us. You can do that using hashtag ear biscuits at his Twitter, Tay Zonday, T-A-Y-Z-O-N-D-A-Y. I really appreciate it. I mean, this is what I'm gonna tweet. Okay. Hey man, thanks for being so open and so introspective.

You know, I'm glad that he was willing to go there and you know, I mean, he's, I think it was clear that he had thought about his experience, but I do feel like maybe we brought him back to it and helped him process it in one place. I like to feel like we've done that at least. Even if no one's listening, like you are listening and I'm glad you're listening,

but, and I'm not saying it's therapy and I'm not saying that Tay needs therapy because that would be the wrong thing to say. I'm really digging a hole for myself. You kinda are. I'm just gonna see how you swim out of this bucket of chocolate rain here in a second. I just enjoy having conversations with people

to get them to process their experience in one sitting, especially when there's kind of lights going off and we're reaching conclusions that maybe they hadn't thought about, but it's not therapy. Yeah, you know. I'm not saying that, Tay. Well, I think the thing that, we've talked to people who are known for something and then, I mean, ultimately every YouTuber, that we've talked to people who are known for something.

And then, I mean, ultimately every YouTuber, every entertainer ultimately has that thing that most people recognize them for, right? I mean, there's very few people that have this really even handed body of work. This everybody has the thing that they broke out with. He happens to be, he is such a right place, right time, 2007, unintentional, so big, like all the- You don't think that if Chocolate Rain hadn't existed

until tomorrow and it hit the internet, that it wouldn't work? No, no, it would work, but it wouldn't be, it would not be the sensation that it wouldn't work? No, no, it would work, but it wouldn't be, it would not be the sensation that it was. I believe that it had to do with a time in which people were thirsty for chocolate rain. I don't know. And things like that. People are still as thirsty today.

I think that, I'm trying to think of the other people that we've talked to who had started with some unintentional success. I think there were a number of Ear Biscuits. The only one that's coming to mind is GloZell though. I'm interested to go back and listen to that one. Yeah. Because she was doing a character,

but then it was, so there was some intentionality to it, just like there was with what Tay was doing, but it blew up in a way that she didn't anticipate. Yeah, well. And she had to react to it. And that's the interesting thing, because we're not talking unintentional in the way, like okay, you were filmed falling into a fountain, and you became super famous for it.

No, no, he created a piece of art. He created something that people authentically like because of all the intentional decisions he made. That's the wonderful thing. The unintentional consequences of intentional decisions. When you describe the elements of chocolate rain that make chocolate rain great, that's all intentional. But like he made the decision to move away

from the mic to breathe. He made the decision to put text on the screen, but he didn't necessarily know that that would be that one of the things that made it entertaining for people. So I love that dynamic. I love the fact that he understands that that was the mechanism that created it, yet he still can't calculate it.

He can only channel it. Like, I think that was, you know, when he talked about his sense of humor in the tweets, like, well, when I try to be funny, it might come across as creepy. But when I'm just putting something out there, people are gonna respond to it. I kind of have to trust that I'm gonna unintentionally

create something through intentionally trying to do something else. I'm gonna intentionally do something unintentional. Right, well, I think what you're saying, Link, is that you can't make it chocolate rain, but when it does chocolate rain, you can take it and use it to your advantage. I mean, even in the song biscuit we did,

I mean, you were reviewing the edit and describing to me that the phenomenon of kind of letting him loose at the end of the song there. I believe that it was, for me personally, the most entertaining songbiscuit to date. And the most entertaining part for me was the end where Tay takes the lead and we kind of move into the background and just repeat a line

over and over again. And he just kind of goes to a Tay Zonday place, signature holding up of both hands at the same time, the facial expression, the tone. It was a privilege to be there. The melody choices. For that. Yes, it was great. It was, you know, I hope you'll enjoy that.

You know, you can put a song biscuit on top of your ear biscuit and make a biscuit sandwich. I don't know. We could analyze our experience forever. We're gonna keep doing that, but you are free to move along with the rest of your life or to the next Ear Biscuit and just keep listening. Maybe you're on a road trip.

We see those tweets, I'm getting on a plane, I'm downloading a whole bunch of Ear Biscuits. Whatever you do, you can count on us to keep baking the biscuits for you. Sheet by sheet. On a weekly basis. Just like chocolate rain.