From “Ridin’ Dirty” To “White & Nerdy.” Weird Al comes bearing parodies.
To get you warmed up for the show, here are five key things I learned from my recent conversation with “Weird Al.”
1. Competition (i.e. YouTube) has made him better.
“For the first two-thirds of my career, I basically had the field to myself,” Yankovic said. “Now all of a sudden, anytime there’s a hit song, there’s immediately 10,000 parodies of it on YouTube. So it just means that I have to step up my game a little bit.”
2. Many artists think being parodied by Yankovic is as cool as winning a Grammy.
Lady Gaga – whose “Born This Way” was transformed into “Perform This Way” – called getting the “Weird Al” treatment a “rite of passage.”
Imagine Dragons raved that having him mock “Radioactive” (it became “Inactive”) was a “huge honor.”
Yankovic’s secret? Playing nice. “You can do comedy and do parody and satire without it being mean-spirited.”
Ready for greatness. #tbt pic.twitter.com/HjgYzuA5oU
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) May 21, 2015
3. His primary goal is to be funny and original. His secondary goal is to avoid getting sued.
Yankovic doesn’t just write songs he thinks artists will be OK with. He actually calls the artist and asks them: Are you OK with this?
“Legally, the whole parody and satire thing is a very gray area. I could certainly get away without asking permission. Most people do.”
Why he asks permission: “I like to be able to sleep well at night and not worry that somebody’s gonna get mad and try to take my house away.”
You can have my electronic yodeling pickle when you PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS. pic.twitter.com/9j56uYSfai — Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) June 12, 2015
4. So… don’t expect to hear “Raspberry Sorbet” or “Tonight We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 1899” anytime soon.
It’s been reported many times over the decades that Prince just doesn’t want his songs to be made fun of.
“I haven’t tried to contact him in about 20 years, so he may have developed a sense of humor,” Yankovic said. “But I approached him a number of times in the ’80s and early ’90s, and he just wasn’t into it.”
It’s official – I’m the new member of Hanson! Thanks to Taylor and Isaac for dropping by my show last night in Tulsa. pic.twitter.com/XdEEX2f6cO — Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) May 20, 2015
5. He’s recorded 14 studio albums, but it’s possible he’ll never make another.
The album format just doesn’t make sense for his type of comedy, especially in the rush-to-be-first social-media world.
“I can’t always have topical material when I’m releasing 12 tracks all at once,” he said, “because chances are, most of those tracks will not be as fresh as the morning’s headlines. So going forward, it just seems to me that I should at least make a go of trying to release songs basically as soon as I come up with them.”
Photo: AP
This story was originally published June 18, 2015 at 9:07 PM.