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Margaret Cho readies “Guitarded” and new TV show

Margaret Cho‘s transition from comedy to musical comedy has been a long time coming. Between her work with Prop 8: The Musical to her disgruntled ode to Miley Cyrus after the pop star’s racist gesture, Cho can certainly pen a sarcastic, funny and brutally honest tune.

But those tunes were just the beginning: Cho appeared as a musical act at South by Southwest in March, and her debut album, Guitarded is scheduled for a 2010 release–with some pretty impressive collaborators on board. Amanda Palmer, Patty Griffin, Tegan and Sara, The New Pornographers, Jill Sobule,Jon Brion and Grant Lee Phillips have all helped Cho with the music for the album, but the lyrics are her specialty.

While decent comedy albums are hard to come by, we have a feeling Cho can pull it off. One of the songs, “Eat S–t and Die,” written with Phillips, is available on Cho’s website for free, and tells a love story in a way only Cho can:

The first time I saw you, I was in love/ Like a poison arrow shot from above / I said I don’t know what this is, but let’s keep talking / Our love grew legs and it was walking / We’re together, it’s been awhile, you lost that brightness and smile / You say you need to work on you, well let me suggest what you can do/ Oh you can eat s–t and die.

Cho told Time magazine the album is a combination of “whimsy and raunch” – like her stand-up “in song form.”

Aside from releasing a new album with the help of a bunch of insanely talented musicians, Cho is also working on a new TV series for Lifetime, which should debut this summer. The show, Drop Dead Diva, sounds like a change from the usual sappy Lifetime lineup:

“It’s about a blond model – really thin and beautiful – who dies and gets her soul transferred into the body of a fat woman,” Cho told LAist.com. “I play the larger woman’s legal secretary, so my character is trying to figure out why she’s acting so weird … The show is about how much we value our physical form and how much thinness and beauty are important in our society.”

So why all the changes, Cho? She credits President Obama – sort of.

“I just thought since the comedy scene is changing so much, I needed to do something different,” she said in the same interview. “I’ve been a political comedian for the past eight years, really railing against the Bush administration and what was going on with the Iraq war and everything. Now that everything is changing, I felt like it was time for my comedy to change.”

With the amazing collaborators and Cho’s work for gay rights over the years, we are hoping for a lesbo-tronic tune or two on the album – with Tegan and Sara perhaps.

What do you think about Cho’s transition into musical comedy?

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