Paul Dempsey Still Cracks Up At The Memory Of 2012 Hashtag Fail #Susanalbumparty

Paul Dempsey, solo artist and frontman for iconic Aussie alt-rock band Something For Kate, says it’s “bloody hard” to articulate exactly what makes him laugh.

“I laugh easily and I laugh frequently,” he says. “What makes me laugh? I don’t know? Everything? That’s not really an answer though.”

He’s speaking to The Music about a week out from the band returning to the studio to record their eagerly anticipated seventh album. Something For Kate’s albums – as well as Dempsey’s solo records – are marked by Dempsey’s songwriting style. At times dry and witty, at others wistful and moving, philosophical and hyper-eloquent, his lyrics knuckle down into the particular, traversing subjects like time travel or Hofstadter’s ‘strange loops’. 

Dempsey lands on an answer: humans. "Humans just constantly overstating their ability, or their capacity, or their value in the vastness of the cosmos,” Dempsey laughs.

He lists off more sources of humour: “My kids make me laugh. Brexit makes me laugh…” 

If he’s chasing something to watch on Netflix, he says he’ll choose a stand-up special before scripted dramas or sitcoms. Recently, he watched British comic Bridget Christie’s 2016 show Stand Up For Her: “She was awesome.” 

And he keeps telling his friends about American stand-up John Mulaney, whose 2015 show The Comeback Kid, and 2018’s Kid Gorgeous, are also on the platform. 

“I like watching stand-ups because it's really a person sort of spilling their brain all over the stage, and you really kinda find out what makes that person tick,” he concludes.

What exactly is so funny about people – and Dempsey stresses that he includes himself in this – is that we don’t “come across the way we hope we do”.

"Just the difference between what might be someone's interior dialogue, compared to how that translates on the exterior – I find it endlessly fascinating and, more often than not, hilariously funny.”

He often finds humour in that disconnect within himself. “I laugh at myself. I always find it funny just when I think about some of my interactions and what's going on in my own head while I'm talking to someone else, and what I'm either revealing or not revealing in that moment. 

“It's all just a dance we're all doing. And then it gets even funnier when you sort of expand it to groups of people and large groups of people. And, you know, just hilarious, large groups of people doing really stupid shit. I think I have to laugh, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry. 

“We have to laugh at each other and we have to laugh at ourselves. We don't do it enough."

“People are funny when they're trying to be funny, but they're even funny when they're not trying to be funny, and they don't even realise that they're being funny.”  

Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously and don’t laugh at ourselves enough. “We have to laugh at each other and we have to laugh at ourselves. We don't do it enough. And it seems like, especially just in recent times, there's not enough levity about how stupid some shit is.”  

Moments of laughter can be found in the darkest places, Dempsey says, describing a moment just the day before, where a friend called him ‘Paula’ in a text conversation about another friend who recently passed away.  

“They were trying to say this really serious, sincere thing in their text messages and they called me Paula. So I just made a joke about that. I look for humour anywhere I can find it. I also really believe that humour can be found in the most dark, awkward, difficult places. And that's also where it's the most important to find it. 

“[Humour] definitely has the ability to make you feel better and it also has the ability to defuse tension. I have a pretty, maybe some would consider it a, dark sense of humour, but I don't even know if that is a thing. You often hear people say, 'Oh, it's a dark sense of humour or it's a black sense of humour,' but humour is humour.

"I'm ready to laugh about death and pain, because I think that it's important to do so. And maybe I find that stuff even funnier,” he says. 

“This is really stupid and really juvenile, but it gets me every time,” Dempsey notes, when asked about something that makes him laugh no matter how much he resists it. He launches into the age-old story of #susanalbumparty. 

In 2012, Scottish operatic-pop singer, Susan Boyle, who rose to superstar status in 2009 on Britain’s Got Talent, released her fourth album, Standing Ovation: The Greatest Songs From The Stage. The release of her album though was marred by a Twitter controversy promoted by the hashtag #susanalbumparty.

That’s intended to read as #SusanAlbumParty, but most Twitter users read it as #SusAnalBumParty. Reading the news coverage of the mistake had Paul Dempsey in hysterics. 

“I was absolutely bent over, in tears laughing for a solid half an hour. And Steph [Ashworth, his wife and Something For Kate bassist] thought I was losing my mind.” 

It’s the kind of moment that might not have been funny at all if it happened to someone else. “I think part of why I found it so funny is just because it's just that thing again of human fallibility. 

“[Susan Boyle’s music is] just very proper and very British and very, you know, targeted at an older market. It's just very tea and scones kind of stuff. And so for it to backfire in such a juvenile way was just extra wonderful [laughs]. I dunno, I just thought it was beautiful."

“I could imagine her horror,” Dempsey laughs. “I think that's what I was probably really laughing at is just imagining her horror.”  

Dempsey says he does approach his music from a place of humour – even if his use of levity in his lyrics is often subtle. 

“It has become apparent to me that I have always thought there was more humour in my lyrics than anybody else was able to detect,” Dempsey says. “So I'm trying to maybe get better at that. 

“I might be talking about something really serious in some songs, but I'm always ready to sort of try and play with the words in such a way to, you know, have a bit of light in there, or a bit of humour reflected in there somehow. 

“I think it makes it more digestible. If you're on a really difficult subject or a really deep subject, it sometimes just makes it all go down a lot easier if there's that little humorous spoonful of sugar. I just think it's a really important part of communication in general. And humour is as important as music – it's a way that we communicate with each other that is not regular conversation.” 

At 43, Dempsey thinks his sense of humour has probably just gotten drier over time, and probably even harder for others to detect. 

“I've always been able to make people laugh in conversation, and that's fine. But, you know, I just feel like as I get older, my jokes are perhaps just harder to detect. [They’re] maybe just going around people a little bit more, which I sort of find more entertaining to myself. So I care less that it's not funny to others, because I'm entertaining myself in some selfish arsehole kind of way,” he laughs.