FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)

FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)

Bo Burnham

“Facetime with My Mom (Tonight)” articulates how Bo feels that the event that he considers so important at the beginning of the song (facetiming his parents) turns into a mundane waste of time every day. It showcases the repetition of lockdown days and how every day feels full of potential however all feel as if they go to waste.

“Facetime with My Mom (Tonight)” explores how internet-mediated communication allows Burnham and others to nurture geographically strained-relationships (due to pandemic or geography-based separation). Yet, the song also highlights how while internet-mediated communication can bring people separated by distance together, it can also push people from generational or social differences apart. Burnham’s parents and other people of older generations lack social and technological commonalities with younger generations, and thus cross-generational communication is made more difficult albeit accessible.

It also highlights the widespread experience during the pandemic of people’s interactions becoming all digital as they attempt to replace real world human interaction with video calls during quarantine.