ABSTRACT
Music not only features in the show in a variety of ways, but the show also uses a music industry model both in its structure and in the way it is produced and promoted. American show Portlandia is a conventional television sketch comedy in that its sketches include a variety of devices such as satire, parody, slapstick, and catchphrase comedy and there are musical number sketches. But Portlandia is arguably the only sketch show so far—at least in the English speaking world—to fully integrate popular music. Music is talked about, listened to, performed, sung, and directly referenced hundreds of times across the episodes. The musical pedigree of Armisen, a drummer and Saturday Night Live alumnus, and Brownstein, singer-guitarist in the band Sleater-Kinney, brings the show an embedded musical texture. Further sketches with a multi-layered approach to music—using it in context, in dialogue and/or performance, and in the background—are threaded through all the seasons of Portlandia so far.
