Comedy Central Presents: Stephen Lynch

Stephen Lynch plays the part of an earnest singer-songwriter, taking the stage with an acoustic guitar and a pristine tenor voice. Then he starts singing about clerical abuse, unusual fetishes, and waiting for his grandfather to die so he can collect an inheritance. The act relies entirely on dissonance. Lynch possesses the actual vocal chops to sell the sincerity of his melodies, which makes the dark, vulgar turns in his lyrics work.

Aired during the third season of Comedy Central Presents in 2000, this half-hour set broke Lynch to a national audience. At the time, he was a working New York comic building a dedicated following through music venue gigs and regular appearances on the Opie and Anthony radio show. Arriving shortly before the release of his debut studio album A Little Bit Special, the broadcast became one of the network’s highest-rated specials of the era. The performance features foundational tracks from his early catalog, including the inheritance anthem “Grandfather” and the relationship track “If I Were Gay”.