[Martin Mull's] songs are a glossy and smoothly subtle blend of many influences shaped and channeled by a unique and whimsically droll point of view. Some of the songs are hymns in praise of such mundane subjects as eggs and Miami ("The only fish around are Nova Scotia lox") but mostly simply tell stories, exploring the narrow but fascinating range of ramifications spreading out from the dropping of an often tiny pebble of aberration into the placid waters of the American norm: a lover ...

[Martin Mull has] made some of the funniest, but most neglected, records around. The problem seems to be that Mull's field is musical parody, and the record-buying public does not appear to be ready for him yet. (p. 25)

The pop minstrels of the first years of the last decade were outraged idealists venting their passion in livid terms while educating a generation about social injustices, moral atrocities and emotional ambiguities. They determined the key in which the epic opera of the '60s' vast conflagration was played. Now, two years into the '70s, a new crop of musical essayists and commentators has emerged and if they set the tone for this decade as their predecessors did for theirs, it will be a v...

Through six years as a singer of loony tunes that found inspiration in the mundane ("Dancing in the Nude," "Margie the Midget," "Noses Run in My Family") and earned him a diminutive but devoted following, Martin Mull maintained a mighty sense of self. If no one showed up at his gigs, it was their loss, not his. Out of a combination of defensiveness and egomania, he created a stage persona that exuded a smug arrogance totally out of proportion to the degree of succes...

Stan Freberg, Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Frank Zappa, Randy Newman, even Homer & Jethro are but a few of the influences that have shaped the sensibility of singer/humorist Martin Mull. Though he is almost never as funny or savage or heartbreaking as any of the above-mentioned at their best, the difference between his first and second albums suggests that by the third time around Mull may have evolved a comic identity that has the power of institutional subversion. The first LP consists entirely of humorou...

[Despite his youth, Martin Mull manages in his first] two albums to carefully and inexorably carve up almost every stereotype in popular music from Fletcher Henderson through the theme for A Man and a Woman, bossa nova, hotel cocktail groups, John Coltrane, Merle Haggard, late-night dance band broadcasts, motel cocktail lounge combos, drunken songwriters, Randy Newman, Roger Miller and anybody else I may have overlooked here at this point in time. The satire works on several levels simultaneously. On the on...

Mull's persona, a nice guy version of the blindly self assured and patronizing Garth Gimble character he so successfully portrayed on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, is so visually based that his records have rarely done his humor justice. Bringing Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture right into your living room is a task for video discs, not records, and it's a testament to his insanity that he comes across on vinyl so well anyway. [I'm Everyone I've Ever Loved] works the best of ...

[Mull's] mind has more dark corners than a chimney nook. His heart belongs to dada…. He satirises the crassness of rock culture with light, deft touches, never savagely, so that absurdities are as delightful as they're never less than truth….

[Martin Mull] is a songwriter of almost depressingly facile wit and also the purveyor of one of the funniest club acts in the history of Western civilization. Unfortunately, his studio albums are disappointing, lacking both audience feedback and the visual antics of Mull himself. [I'm Everyone I've Ever Loved] is no exception. Despite some marvelous material (the title tune, a disco parody to end all disco parodies, the thoroughly scandalous Humming Song) and valiant support by an all-star cas...