Memories of My Misguided Youth: Joe Piscopo's "Kimberly"

On second thought, maybe no one should ever write a love song again.

(Memories of My Misguided Youth is a new feature in which I reflect on a pop culture moment that insists on occupying space in my brain even decades later)

You can’t handle this heat.

NOTE: Yes, I know this was a running gag with both Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony, none of whom I ever listened to, but credit where credit is due (I guess).

When the time comes to crowdfund a Museum of Cringe, an entire hall will be dedicated to public declarations of love. When visitors enter it, they will be greeted with a glass case containing the vials filled with each other’s blood that Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton wore during their brief marriage. Tom Cruise’s couch-jumping, fist-pumping announcement on The Oprah Winfrey Show that he was in love with Katie Holmes will be running on a constant loop. As for the soundtrack, may I suggest “Kimberly,” Joe Piscopo’s passionate ode to his much younger girlfriend.

In order to understand the spine-shattering cringe of Joe Piscopo the alleged singer, we must for a moment discuss Joe Piscopo the man. After Jean Doumanian’s legendarily disastrous one-season run producing Saturday Night Live, Piscopo was one of only two cast members to be carried over to the following season. The other was a kid named Eddie Murphy, you’ve never heard of him. Piscopo considered himself a team with Murphy, even though Murphy was a comic genius, and Piscopo’s primary talents were an eerily good impersonation of Frank Sinatra¹, and a passable impersonation of Jerry Lewis, neither of which was in high demand in 80s comedy.

Murphy and Piscopo both left Saturday Night Live the same year, and while Murphy quickly became one of the biggest stars of the decade Piscopo struggled to find his footing. After a few unremarkable movie roles², he stuck predominantly with stand-up comedy and commercial appearances, including a Miller Lite ad that I shan’t post a link to here because today it would be considered a hate crime.

Then, starting somewhere in the late 80s, Piscopo had a decade-long midlife crisis. He got a divorce, became a bodybuilder (which resulted in this incredible photo that looks like his head is pasted on another man’s body), and, in the grand tradition of other notable middle-aged men like Ben Affleck and Jude Law³, took up with his son’s nanny. He also began considering himself a genuine singer, and not just someone who was good at imitating a specific singer’s voice.

This was first evident in a 1990 HBO comedy special, during which Piscopo brings things to a dead standstill when he talks about a nasty custody battle over his son before going into a 100% sincere rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender⁴.” There’s nothing remarkable about his vocals, but, given his dramatic posture and pained expression, clearly he thinks he’s a real wailer, and because of that there’s something almost charming about it, like the first elimination round of American Idol.

That charm had worn off a year later, however, when Piscopo took advantage of the captive audience of a New York City talk show⁵ to perform a song dedicated to Kimberly Driscoll, the previously mentioned nanny. Though he feigns modesty about it at first, as soon as Piscopo sits down in front of a piano and starts beating it like it owes him money it’s clear that he fully expected to blow the audience away with his musical showmanship.

Gone now is the touchingly flat singing voice from the HBO special, and in its place is a strained, Springsteen-esque rasp, which, when paired with his frequent “it physically hurts to be this soulful” grimaces, makes him look like he’s not so much a man in love but a man in desperate need of some Dulcolax. Piscopo isn’t covering the Boss this time, however. No, “Kimberly” is an original composition, a overwrought declaration of his love for Driscoll, and his belief that together they’ll beat the odds, the “odds” being that generally the world looks askance at 40 year-old men sleeping with 18 year-old girls, particularly when they’re their employer.

Like all the greatest love songs, the lyrics of “Kimberly” are predominantly defensive, lamenting that “there’s evil forces⁶ working here that try to pull us apart.” Piscopo sweats, winces, and pounds on those keys like he’s playing “Born to Run,” as he’s accompanied by the most indifferent back-up singers you’ve ever heard. Along with this (and belying the suggestion that Piscopo just spontaneously decided to perform the song) is a reel of heavily choreographed footage of Piscopo and Driscoll kissing and making eyes at each other, and Driscoll posing in skimpy workout gear.

Driscoll herself is occasionally shown standing just off-stage watching Piscopo perform, and looking both touched and mortified at the same time, like a person receiving a marriage proposal from someone wearing a gorilla costume. Despite those evil forces working against them, “Kimberly” ends on a triumphant note, with Piscopo declaring “We’re gonna make it, girl, you and me, whoaaaa, we’re gonna make it, Kimberly.”

Reader, they did not make it.

Though Piscopo and Driscoll did eventually marry in 1997, they divorced less than a decade later, after Piscopo again cheated with his employee⁷. By that point, “Kimberly” had become a running gag on the morning radio show circuit, with Piscopo himself laughing it off as a lark, though if he’s not actually taking himself seriously in that clip, then it’s the best acting anyone’s ever done. Perhaps Hollywood made a grievous error in choosing Eddie Murphy over him.

Since getting cleaned out in two acrimonious divorce settlements⁸, Piscopo has spent much of the past decade leaning into a bizarre “ring a ding ding” Rat Pack persona, not quite his beloved Frank Sinatra, but maybe his lesser known cousin, Jim Sinatra. Promoting himself as less a comedian who occasionally sings than a singer who occasionally tells jokes, he even opened a short-lived nightclub named for himself in Atlantic City, at which a recording of a performance rated a tough crowd 3.5 on IMDB (it also gave us this terrifying DVD cover in which he looks like a wax figure of himself).

Perhaps unsurprising given his anachronistic embracing of a time when the Blacks and the broads knew their place, Piscopo, like a lot of Boomer-age comedians facing irrelevancy, has taken up the Conservative mantle in recent years. After a thankfully brief run as a candidate for Governor of New Jersey, he’s stumped for Donald Trump, expressed some questionable opinions on both the COVID-19 vaccine and cancel culture, and did a rap at an event hosted by MyPillow CEO/professional lunatic Mike Lindell. So, honestly, by comparison “Kimberly” is really only the fourth or fifth most embarrassing thing Joe Piscopo has ever done.

1. The problem with Piscopo’s impersonation of Sinatra was that it was so respectful that it was boring, and belonged more in a “Legends in Concert” casino show than in sketch comedy.

2. Though I will stump for both Johnny Dangerously and Wise Guys.

3. And Ethan Hawke, and Robin Williams, and Mick Jagger, and Gavin Rossdale, and…

4. As if suddenly remembering where he was, Piscopo stops in the middle of that to do a homophobic riff on male singing voices of the day.

5. If you don’t mind losing 45 minutes of your precious life, you can watch the whole thing here, which features a performance by Color Me Badd.

6. Presumably Driscoll’s parents, who probably weren’t thrilled that their teenage daughter was dating someone more than twice her age.

7. This time it was his personal assistant, though why Joe Piscopo still thought he needed a personal assistant by 2006 is anyone’s guess.

8. Folks, I cannot stress this enough: don’t sleep with your employees.