Maybe Weird Al isn't that weird after all

I've always been fascinated by the mayfly-like lifespans of pop acts.  One hit wonders are one thing, but if you go back and look at the length even a super group has on the charts, it’s a wonder anyone produces a second hit album.  Okay, there are outliers like The Rolling Stones who will be touring three years after Keith Richards dies, but on the other hand The Beatles lasted (in America) from 1964 to 1970, six years.  ABBA lasted eight years, from 1973 to 1981. Sheryl Crow first hit the top ten in 1994 and last hit the top 20 in 2003, a nine year span.

Okay, I’m cherry picking data; let’s not talk about Elvis, Elton John, or acts that were successful for decades like Sinatra. The fact is that if a pop act can last for more than a decade, they are special. Weird Al Yankovic first hit the top 20 of the US album chart in 1983. His latest album, Mandatory Fun, became his first number 1 album ever in 2014. That’s 31 years of accordion solos and song parodies; given that his gift is impersonating other acts, that demonstrates an amazing capacity for evolving with the popular times.

Weird Al Yankovic is a singular genius, literally. In a profession where imitation is the sincerest form of creativity, no one has EVER tried to copy what Weird Al Yankovic does, at least not on a regular basis. He has a knack for taking the melody of a hit song, finding the perfect way of changing the lyrics that both work with the music and are internally consistent, and afterwards it sounds like the song should have sounded that way to begin with. The rise of YouTube has fostered some imitators, but none operate on the scale Weird Al does.

Some of his early efforts are fairly obvious; it is no great feat of imagination to change “I Love Rock and Roll” to “I Love Rocky Road,” or “Another One Bites the Dust” to “Another One Rides the Bus.” But his creativity grew as he became more successful.  Converting “Gansta’s Paradise” to “Amish Paradise” is a stroke of genius, giving him not only one of his better parodies but also arguably his best videos.

Talking about videos raises another factor of his creative growth. From 1993 to 2003 he took over directing his own music videos, demonstrating additional skill in creating funny visuals to match the humor in his lyrics. His videos also reinforced his attention to detail; the parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” used the same actor who played a janitor in the Nirvana video, and the video for “Bedrock Anthem” was filmed on the same desert location that the Red Hot Chili Peppers used for their video.  It seems like Yankovic puts such confines on himself in order to be more creative.

As I mentioned above, another amazing facet of Weird Al’s success is his ability for follow the changes in the music industry.  He started out doing pop songs, but eventually produced parodies of rap songs, grunge songs, and songs whose genres have probably been forgotten.

Mandatory Fun is the first Weird Al album that I’ve heard that I have no idea what the source material is.  I am so divorced from modern music that the only melody I recognize on Mandatory Fun is Pharrell’s ubiquitous “Happy,” transformed into “Tacky.” But being unfamiliar with the songs he’s parodying doesn’t make them less funny.  “Foil” starts off as an ode to an alternative to Tupperware and devolves into warning about the Illuminati. “Word Crimes” is probably the first song in history to mention the Oxford comma and establishes Yankovic’s cred as someone who may act silly but he sincerely wants his fans to know the difference between “doing well” and “doing good.” The album ends with the epic, 8 minute long “Jackson Park Express,” an original song about a love affair that takes place entirely in a guy’s imagination during a bus ride.

I have some problem with the song “First World Problems.” First of all, the phrase “first world” no longer works; it was coined back when the Soviet bloc was the “second world” and non-aligned countries were called the “third world.” With the fall of the Soviet Union the phrase no longer makes sense. Second, the problems Weird Al details (a pixel being out on his laptop, not having small enough bills for vending machines) are not problems all people in first world countries have, they are problems rich people have. It should have been called “One percenter problems.”

I also find “Mission Statement,” a song that strings together meaningless phrases used by business consultants, to be kicking too easy of a target (it is also very easy to convert the phrases into lyrics as most end with a long E sound (synergy, efficiency, functionality)). The song is not a parody of any song in particular but is a general pastiche of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s style, down to sampling Suite: Judy Blue Eyes at one point (in addition to parodies of specific songs and original songs, Weird Al sometimes writes songs that are merely in the style of an artist; for example, Dare to Be Stupid was an homage to Devo).

Weird Al’s future has been the subject of speculation. An interview with a newspaper in Allentown, PA, was largely misinterpreted his announcing his retirement when what he said was a desire to do no more CDs but more digital distribution.  Part of the success of Mandatory Fun comes from his decision to release videos of the songs on the album for free on YouTube.  Leave it to Weird Al to adapt to the digital revolution.