The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Al Yankovic
Wandering Wednesdays #23
Is there a relationship between music & stand up comedy?
The first time I came across Al Yankovic (or Weird Al as he’s called) was when I listened to ‘Eat It’ almost 4 decades ago — his shot-by-shot parody of Michael Jackson’s smash hit ‘Beat It’ — which was a single from his 1984 album “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D. Both the lyrics and the video were absolutely ridiculous, but they were also compulsively watchable. In riffing on Jackson, at the time perhaps the most famous artist in the world, Al was able to have an immediate shorthand with his audience. Everyone knew ‘Beat It’, and therefore everyone got the absurdity of turning it into a lyrical joke about indulging in junk food.1
How come you're always such a fussy young man?
Don't want no Captain Crunch, don't want no Raisin Bran
Well, don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan?
So eat it, just eat it (brr)
Don't wanna argue, I don't wanna debate
Don't wanna hear about what kinds of foods you hate (woo)
You won't get no dessert 'til you clean off your plate
So eat it, don't you tell me you're full
Weird Al has now spent five decades in the limelight — far longer than many of the artists he has parodied over the years.
Nobody wanted to sign me in the early ‘80s. They thought, ‘comedy music, you’re a novelty artist.’ And historically, novelty artists become one-hit wonders, and then they’re forgotten quickly. So yeah, that’s kind of the big irony of my life, I’m still here.
Al’s first and only Top 10 hit came with this parody of Chamillionaire, funny enough to make you dizzy as these 8 lines sped by in less than 15 seconds:
First in my class here at M.I.T.
Got skills, I'm a champion at D&D
MC Escher, that's my favorite MC
Keep your 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea
My rims never spin — to the contrary
You'll find they're quite stationary
All of my action figures are cherry
Stephen Hawking's in my library
A song by a nerd, about nerds, for nerds; it's meant to be picked apart, line by line — perfect for ‘jobless’ students.
Al won five Grammy awards; sold more than 12 million albums — more than any other comedy act in history — recorded more than 150 parody and original songs; performed more than 1,000 live shows and he is still going strong. In addition to 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story starring Daniel Radcliffe (recently nominated for the 2023 Emmy’s), Al is still touring and producing new music. True to form, ‘Weird’ is by no means an actual biopic — the master of parody has made a parody on biopics.
It brought me so much joy to see that the number one Google search was, ‘Did Weird Al and Madonna have a fling?’. I don’t know if Madonna is even aware of this movie. I’m very curious what she thinks… I hope she’s OK with it.
So what’s the secret of his endurance? It’s probably that, for all his silliness, Al takes music very seriously, pouring over lyrics and bringing genuine talent to his parodies. If he was a terrible musician, the parody probably wouldn’t land. That he’s deeply committed to all of it makes something like ‘Eat It’ — as silly as it is — genuinely enjoyable.
Al inspired budding comedians in the same way Mad inspired him. And not just comics. Lin-Manuel Miranda told The New York Times in 2020 that Al was an influence on Hamilton and that he often prefers Al’s spoofs to the original songs.
So, sure, an American accordion-wielding kid growing up to write songs about food is weird. But for millions of Weird Al fans, weird2 is wonderful.
While MJ agreed to Weird Al parodying Beat It, he later refused when he was asked about ‘Black or White’ — Jackson felt this was too serious a message to satirize. Paul McCartney felt that way, too when Al asked him for permission to parody ‘Live or Let Die’ as ‘Chicken Pot Pie’. McCartney declined saying he was a vegetarian.
Speaking of weirdness, Shweta Sharma recently reported in The Independent that Sailors say they have discovered new way to defend against killer whale attacks – heavy metal music — they have successfully deterred orcas by playing loud heavy metal songs through underwater speakers, describing the method as a ‘game changer’. The whales are not amused in the same way Weird Al fans are.
Time and again and … — the loony music video “Gangnam Style” will soon hit five billion views on YouTube, making it the most watched clip of all time. At 4:12 minutes, that equates to about 350m hours, or more than 40,000 years. What other achievements were forgone in the time spent watching a sideways shuffle and air lasso? Had people not been watching Psy — the South Korean pop star who released the song in July 2012 — they could have built more than ten Great Pyramids of Giza, or another two Wikipedias, or fifteen Burj Khalifas in Dubai. The opportunity cost of watching Psy’s frivolity is huge, but humanity has at least been entertained.