Moontower Comedy Fest takes over downtown Austin April 13-24, bringing a huge lineup to town and spotlighting Austin’s homegrown scene. Jeremiah Watkins is definitely one to check out, performing April 20-23. He grew up in Kansas before moving to L.A. where he’s become a regular at the famed Comedy Store. Jeremiah is also the co-host of the Scissor Bros podcast, makes ridiculous musical parodies, and his debut 1-hour standup special Jeremiah Watkins: Family Reunion is streaming now on Amazon Prime. We caught up with Jeremiah to hear about his guilty pleasures: the songs he loves that he’s kinda embarrassed to love.
One Direction – “What Makes You Beautiful”
“This first one, oof, it is a good one. I grew up with boy bands like NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, and it unfortunately kept sticking. I don’t like that I like this song. I don’t really enjoy that this song makes me happy out of the blue, but when I turn this song on, it makes me feel good inside, and I hope it makes you feel as good as I do sitting alone in my car, listening to teenage boy bands. This song caught me out of the blue. And then before I knew it, I was bopping my head back and forth and I was like, Oh man, I feel beautiful. These guys are singing to me right now. This is amazing! Who is this? One Direction? Gonna have to put these guys on the playlist. Hello!”
Enya – “Only Time”
“Whew. Another one that will make you question if you will like my comedy or not by the end of this list. This is Enya with ‘Only Time,’ and the reason why I chose this song is every single time I hop on a flight and I need to zen out and chill out and calm down and put myself to rest, I put on that beautiful Irish woman, Enya. She tickles my eardrums with ‘Only Time’ and puts me at ease and makes me feel good about the weird place that I’m heading to.”
Dolly Parton – “Jolene”
“My final guilty pleasure is actually Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene.’ Now, this song is probably not a guilty pleasure for a lot of people, especially people who live in Texas and grew up around country music. I grew up in Kansas and was inundated with all different kinds of genres of country throughout my formative years. And I hated it. I’m not a big fan of country at all. You can probably hear me on literally hundreds of podcast interviews trashing country and saying that I don’t like it at all. So this is a very, very big secret, guilty pleasure of mine that I like a country song and it is by the great Dolly Parton.“
