Comedian John Mulaney Tells Pitchfork About Love Of Phish’s Song ‘Reba’

Comedian John Mulaney participated in Pitchfork’s “5-10-15-20” interview series about the songs that shaped him at ages 5, 10, 15 and 20, and continuing on in five-year segments. When Mulaney was 15, it was Phish’s song “Reba” that had the greatest impact on the comedian.

Leading up to Phish, Mulaney cited The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” as his age-5 song and Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” (which Phish covers) as his age-10 song. Here’s what Mulaney, whose standup special Baby J recently premiered on Netflix, told P4K about listening to Phish as a 15-year-old:

“I was trying to figure out how to be interesting. I had friends, had a decent time socially. I went to a fair amount of parties. We were into drugs, but no one was out of control at the time. I was all over the place musically. At 15, my dad walked into my room while I was blasting his Ike & Tina Turner album with ‘Proud Mary’ on it, and he was just laughing. When OK Computer came out, I read about it in NME and they said it might be the best British album of all-time. I would take the train to my math tutor and blast that or ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ by Bowie.

“I really hesitated telling Pitchfork this, but we were going to Phish concerts and doing that whole thing too. I got into them because of Colleen O’Brien, my best friend John O’Brien’s older sister — she was a senior when we were freshmen. She had a poster for Phish’s A Live One in her bedroom and was playing that song ‘Reba’ — ‘Bag it, tag it, sell it to the butcher in the store.’ It was like, ‘Oh are these guys trying to be funny?’ By that point I was the biggest Talking Heads fan, and the biggest thing that drew me to David Byrne was that I thought he was really funny. The thing that turns off some people about Phish is their lyrics. And the scene. But it was like, ‘Oh, these guys are dorks. They like The Simpsons, they’re of this time, they have a lot of influences, and they’re phenomenal musicians.’ I saw them again recently for the first time in 20 years, and it was the best.”

Mulaney attended one of Phish’s shows at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin in August 2022. The 41-year-old Mulaney was able to meet Phish bassist Mike Gordon.

As he got older, Mulaney selected songs by Steely Dan, Jay-Z, Destroyer, Weather Report and Jessie Ware. Visit Pitchfork to see which of those artists’ tracks Mulaney picked.