As a young ‘un, I can remember the sheer joy of hearing Weird Al Yankovic come on the radio or on MTV. Doubling over in laughter as his latest parody was released and came into my life. I was not even double-digit years old, but I knew that this accordion-player was the coolest guy on the planet. My older brothers scoffed at me and rolled their eyes, and went back to listening to their Led Zeppelin, or whatever it is that older brothers listen to. But I loved this guy, he was funny. What do older brothers know anyway?
My initiation into the Zen of Weird Al Yankovic was Eat It, which is, of course, the parody of Michael Jackson’s Beat It. The song was great, but the video was pure genius. Parodying the Michael Jackson video so perfectly well, getting heavy airplay on MTV, it was hard to escape this brilliant nugget of comedic parody. I went out and spent my hard-earned paper route dollars on that vinyl album on which Eat It was found, Weird Al In 3-D. Who was this polka-playing comedy genius!?!!! (Let’s take a moment and give a quick shout-out to Al’s album’s deep cuts, the polka songs. Sometimes I enjoy them even more so than his brilliant parodies, just hearing him take modern pop, rap, and rock songs and put them into a medley with a polka beat. The simplicity is strangely, yet undeniably, entertaining.) Now that I was properly initiated into the comedic joy that is Weird Al, I had to go back into his catalog and learn more about this undeniable talent.
I soon discovered earlier popular parodies of his. While Eat It was his biggest hit song for two decades, reaching #12 on the Billboard Hot 100, his awesomeness did not materialize out of thin air. Prior hits included Ricky (the I Love Lucy themed parody of Toni Basil’s Mickey), I Love Rocky Road (parodying I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts), Another One Rides The Bus (parodying Another One Bites The Dust by Queen), and My Bologna (parodying My Sharona by The Knack).
Alfred Matthew Yankovic grew up in Lynwood, California. Born in 1959, his parents would buy him an accordion at seven years old. Encouraged by his father that the secret to a successful life would be to do what makes him happy, Al would record My Bologna in a radio station bathroom and send the tape of it off to his favorite radio station DJ, Dr. Demento. Dr. Demento specialized in playing novelty songs, parodies, comedy, and pretty much anything a little bit on the weirder side of life. Al would get My Bologna onto the Dr. Demento show, and would eventually meet up with The Knack one day after a concert. He introduced himself as the My Bologna guy, and perhaps surprisingly, The Knack were fans of Al and his parody. (More often than not, with a few notable exceptions, history has shown that it seems as if artists generally do enjoy being parodied by the Weird one.) Doug Fieger of The Knack contacted Capitol Records and suggested they release My Bologna as a single. They did, and Weird Al even got a six-month record contract out of this.
Fast forward back to me in the mid-80’s, and the Weird Al that I grew up with. I believe that MTV really played an integral role in Weird Al’s mainstream success. MTV was the arbiter of what was considered cutting edge and cool back then. Watching MTV as soon as I got home from school was important to not just me, but any kid growing up in the 1980’s. Al had a knack for making really funny videos. Whether it was Eat It, I Love Rocky Road, or Ricky, they were all pretty funny. Soon Al would release the parody Like A Surgeon, parodying Madonna’s Like A Virgin, with a video featuring him writhing around in surgical scrubs just as Madonna did with a different wardrobe in her video. Fat, the glorious parody of Michael Jackson’s Bad, would soon follow. MTV and Weird Al complemented each other well, and soon would lead to many collaborations. Weird Al would take over MTV for a weekend afternoon, three or four hours at a time, and AL-TV was born. Featuring Weird Al’s videos, other strange comedy songs or sketches, and hilariously awesome and wonderful interview parodies. AL-TV is a feature that would air on MTV (or VH1) multiple times in multiple decades. Ten separate episodes aired (and re-aired) from the 1980’s into the new Millennium.
Random thought (before I return to the narrative of this article): One of my favorite Weird Al songs, underrated and not well known, is the parody of I Think We’re Alone Now, this being I Think I’m A Clone Now. You should listen to that right now!
In 1989, Weird Al would release a film, UHF. (Featuring Michael Richards as Stanley Spadowski, a Krameresque character made just before Kramer would come into existence on the Seinfeld TV show.) The movie was actually pretty funny, but it really got lost in the shuffle of the summer blockbusters of 1989. Squeezed in a summer slate of films such as Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, and Weekend At Bernie’s, UHF never really had a chance to shine on its own and was not as commercially successful as the stakeholders hoped it would be. The soundtrack did feature another classic, the Dire Straits parody of Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies. With, once again, a spectacularly entertaining video.
I feel as if Weird Al possibly seemed to have a slump at this point. I don’t remember any big parody hits for a couple of years. Surprisingly, no Vanilla Ice parody ever was created. Perhaps he would just be a 1980’s phenomenon and slowly fade away. But then, just when it seemed like maybe Weird Al was heading off into the sunset of his career, Nirvana would show up and change music. It would also provide Weird Al a new moment to shine.
I was in junior high school when Smells Like Teen Spirit became a hit. It almost seems like a caricature at this point to say that music changed when that song became popular. Everybody says that, but it honestly was true. The moment everyone heard it, everything seemed to change. The 80’s hair bands were instantly old-fashioned. Even things like MC Hammer changed too, in other ways. MC Hammer was still popular, teenagers were still listening to 2 Legit 2 Quit and Addams Family Groove, but no longer were we wearing the parachute pants. Now we were wearing flannel. The icon of what was cool had changed, and changed abruptly.
This led to my personal favorite Weird Al song. His parody, Smells Like Nirvana, was not simply just him using words that rhymed in order to create his comedy, his was playfully mocking all of grunge music. The scene, the style, the flannel. It was more of a meta approach to comedy and parody, and it seemed to mark an elevation in his ability and quality. No longer were my older brothers rolling their eyes at Weird Al, because they were grown-ups now and were busy working for a living. Now I was going from junior high into high school kid. We were the teenagers, the arbiters of pop. We had all grown up with Weird Al, he wasn’t a weird guy at all, he was this funny guy that had already entertained us for a decade. Smells Like Nirvana was hugely popular in my high school. Everybody loved that song, and loved Weird Al. I feel as if that was a moment that kind of made Weird Al a permanent part of our Americana. He wasn’t going away, he would be around for another generation. Al would be part of our entertainment lives for the rest of our lives. He was a standard, a brand.
In the summer of 1994, I got to see Weird Al perform at a club in Roseville, MI. It was the first of many times I would see him perform live. One of the highlights of the show is that I would get to hear him perform Headline News, a parody of the Crash Test Dummies song Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. Headline News would not even be released until the following fall, this performance really was a sneak peek of something that was brand new. In an era that was pre-Internet, when new songs were not leaked and even if they were they really did not have a means of being distributed, this was an Earth-shatteringly cool moment in the life of a teenage kid. To hear a parody of such a recent song, Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, and to parody it by using extremely recent news events in the lyrics, seemed so cutting edge for that moment in time. Weird Al the artist was simply getting better and better at his craft. Everything was not just a rhyme, not just a joke about TV or food, the comedy was anything and everything. Whatever tickled his fancy.
Random thought: Another underrated gem, This Song’s Just Six Words Long, and parody of George Harrison’s I’ve Got My Mind Set On You.
I have probably seen Weird Al perform live 5 times in the last 20 years. He comes through town typically every year or two, usually during the summer amphitheater season. He is a very entertaining live performer. It’s not just the songs he performs, but he fills the gaps in between the songs with video clips of interview parodies, other comedic bits, and various sketches. These video segments are typically quite funny. Weird Al is simply a great entertainer and I highly recommend seeing him if you get the opportunity.
My teenage years are well behind me now. While I still try to keep up with pop music somewhat, it’s safe to say that pop music is not exactly keen on reeling in me and those in my age bracket as their usual focus. But Weird Al is still out there, parodying the songs of the day. From White and Nerdy (his best-selling song of all time, parodying Ridin’ Dirty) to Word Crimes (a parody of Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke), Yankovic updates his repertoire and becomes relevant again and again to each new generation. In 2014, Al’s final album Mandatory Fun, became his first album to ever reach number one. (While he has not ruled out creating future albums, it seems as if the future of his music will likely be singles or surprise drops on youtube.)
Another random thought: everyone should watch the video for Foil, a parody a Lorde’s Royals. The video takes a bit of a turn halfway through the song, but stick with it, the comedy payoff all makes sense in the end.
Coolio rather famously had a beef over Weird Al’s Amish Paradise parody of Gangster’s Paradise. But the two long ago made peace and Coolio admitted the song was rather funny. (I’m sure Coolio’s share of the Amish Paradise royalties did not hurt the cause.) I believe the vast majority of artists consider it a badge of honor to be chosen by Weird Al for parody. There is a video of Lin Manuel Miranda, the man behind the the play and the music of Hamilton, being brought to tears when he discovers that Weird Al made a polka out of his music. That is what Weird Al has achieved, being parodied by him is now the milestone performers want to achieve. To be parodied by Weird Al means that a musician has arrived.
On behalf of generations of fans everywhere, can The Recording Academy please give Weird Al Yankovic a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award? This is a man that took his dream of making fun of, not in meanness but in tribute, many major songs and artists of our lifetimes and turned it into a career entertaining all of us. He makes us all laugh, fans of every genre of music, putting out rock, pop, country, and rap parodies. A parody from him is an achievement in itself, signifying other artists’ pop culture relevance. The time has come, can we unite our divided nation behind the idea that Weird Al deserves the proper recognition for his lifetime of achievements? Weird Al has already been nominated for 16 Grammys, and has won 5 of those nominations. Let’s give him one more, an award he deserves for his lifetime of entertainment, let’s give him that Lifetime Achievement Grammy.
-MTR