Weird Al Creative Categories, Ranked
During the pandemic, "Weird" Al Yankovic's collection of cover songs during his 2018 "Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour" was one of my repeated listens. I would listen to that four hour album on endless repeat. That led me down a Weird Al rabbithole, where I would binge Weird Al content on YouTube until my stomach hurt.
Although I was never a superfan, as a teen I thought Weird Al was clever and cool. Some of my classmates strongly disagreed, and I could not understand why. Now I can see where they were coming from. Yankovic has his weaknesses, but he also has many strengths and I continue to find much of his work entertaining.
Weird Al does more than change the lyrics to popular songs. His work takes different forms, from popular music polkas to fake celebrity interviews to TV shows. I find myself liking some of these forms more than others, and in this entry I will offer my ranking of Weird Al themes and forms from my least preferred to my most.
I mention a lot of songs in this entry. They are easy enough to find on YouTube if you search for the song titles, so I will not link them. There's a compilation of original songs from his 2018 tour, and this concert album from 2010 gives a flavour of the variety of content he performs in his live shows. I also refer to this 2022 show several times in the entry.
Movie Recaps
Let's start with the most irritating songs: "parodies" which consist of rewriting the lyrics to iconic songs with the plots of movie blockbusters. Fan favourite "The Saga Begins" (parodying Don McLean's "American Pie") is the worst offender here, but there is also "Ode to a Superhero" (parodying Billy Joel's "Piano Man"), "Jurassic Park" (parodying "MacArthur Park" y Richard Harris) and I guess even "Yoda" (parodying "Lola" by the Kinks).
I don't hate all of these songs equally (I have a soft spot for "Yoda" and the bridge of "Jurassic Park") but "The Saga Begins" bugs me a lot. This song really isn't a parody, and it is not very funny; its purpose is to relate the plot of bottom-3 Star Wars movie The Phantom Menace. But that's not its worst sin. Its worst sin is that I loved "American Pie" to the point where at one point I had memorized the lyrics, and "The Saga Begins" ruined my enjoyment of that song by displacing its lyrics in my brain.
This I think is one of the primary complaints made by my high-school classmates, and I think it is one of the most solid strikes against Weird Al's catalogue -- all too often the parodies ruin the original songs, because they have the (same) catchy tunes, but Weird Al's lyrics are more memorable. Then when I hear the original I can't help but think of the parody.
If the parody was bad and forgettable that would be one thing, but the music is good (which is why these songs are classics!) and the lyrics are memorable. That makes it worse.
I don't think George Lucas paid Weird Al to record "Yoda", which maybe puts it in a different category from "The Saga Begins" and "Ode to a Superhero". So maybe it should be treated differently. But overall I am not a fan of this mini-genre at all.
In some sense Weird Al is always a sellout (I remember him describing himself as a parasite on pop culture) but his movie recaps are the selliest out.
Ultraviolence
This is not exactly a category of songs, but it is a common theme that runs through many of his tunes: Weird Al tries to make his songs sound ridiculous by making them very very violent. I guess I am just a weak-stomached old person, but I no longer find violence all that entertaining, and often Yankovic's tendency towards ultraviolence ruins an otherwise good song. The Ben Folds parody "Why Does this Always Happen to Me" is a classic example of this. The song relates a number of tragedies (an earthquake, a car accident) but then progresses to the protagonist stabbing his boss in the face with a knife.
There are many other examples. "I Remember Larry", "The Complicated Song", "Everything You Know is Wrong", and "Melanie" also suffer from this problem.
To his credit, Weird Al acknowledges this tendency towards violence in his 2022 tour. But he still includes these dark songs frequently in his setlists.
Trans Punchlines
Another unfortunate tendency Weird Al has held over the years has been to use transgenderism as a punchline. In ""Albuquerque" he is attacked by a one-nostrilled hermaphrodite, whom he genders as a "man". During live performances of "Yoda" he used to invite audience participation from all the transvestites. I think much of this is humour that has moved out of the Overton window and as a result aged poorly. He still makes light of the situation; in the 2022 concert I linked above Weird Al addresses the one-nostrilled hermaphrodite lyric, but the acknowledgement is jokey.
One song I like but which is likely Problematic is "Truck Drivin' Song". The main joke is that a deep-voiced truck driver dresses up in girl's clothing. It is pretty clearly a homage/ripoff of Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song", and I can see how people could find it offensive. I don't see the song as mean-spirited and thus am not as bothered by it, but I am also not trans. So I am probably Problematic here too.
Celebrity Interviews
When Weird Al was doing Muchmusic and MTV specials he would put together fake interviews with celebrities, where he took pre-existing interviews of celebrities and spliced in his own interactions to make the celebrities look ridiculous. Although some of these (like the Eminem interview) have become notorious, I mostly find them unentertaining. Maybe this is because taking clips out of context is a common tactic people on Twitter use when advancing bad-faith arguments.
Movies and TV
In this category I would put Weird Al's children's TV series The Weird Al Show and the movie UHF. Probably the fake biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story belongs here too, although I have not seen that movie.
I think a lot of this stuff is silly. The children's series was strange because in my opinion it did not know whether it wanted to be children's television or a satire of children's television. (Granted, Pee-Wee's Playhouse also did not know what it wanted to be, but for some reason that series worked better.)
There are aspects of this stuff that seems cringy now, but surprisingly I am less offended by the "Gandhi II" segment from UHF now than when I first saw it.
I think I would like to watch the fake biopic, and maybe I would like to rewatch UHF, but most of this creative output is mid to me.
Straight Parodies
These are what made Weird Al famous -- songs that copy the melody of some popular song, but change the lyrics. To be sure, many of these parodies have stood the test of time. The downside is that many of them also ruin the source material. Thankfully, I have never been that much of a music aficionado, so most of the songs have not been ruined for me, but there are definite examples. I kind of liked Lorde's song "Royals", but "Foil" has supplanted it in my mind. I actively disliked "Perform This Way", Weird Al's parody of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". I can't tell whether I dislike the song because the parody is weak, or because it ruins a song I liked. "Smells Like Nirvana" is a good test case, because I like both the Nirvana and Weird Al versions. In this case the Weird Al version did not ruin the Nirvana version.
It would be weird (pun intended) for a Weird Al fan to hate all of the straight parodies, and indeed some of these songs are among my favourites. "Headline News" (parodying the Crash Test Dummies "Mmm mmm mmm mmm") is dated but is still great, and apparently the Dummies liked it too. (Hypocrisy alert: I do not know why this song is okay but the movie recap songs are so irritating.)
A few other standouts for me include "Party in the CIA", "All About the Pentiums", "Cavity Search", "Canadian Idiot" (natch), and "TMZ".
The common theme here is that I enjoyed the parodies when I was unfamiliar enough with the source songs that they were not ruined for me.
Podcast Interviews
Weird Al has done a lot of media interviews over the years. From time to time he shows up on podcasts, and when the host is funny it becomes apparent just how quick-witted Weird Al can be. Good examples are Weird Al's appearances on Conan O'Brien's podcast and his interview(s) with Nardwuar the Human Serviette.
When the interviewers are boring or earnest then Yankovic does not shine as brightly. But even in these interviews Weird Al often talks frankly about how the music business works, which can be insightful.
Long In-Jokes
There are a few Weird Al songs that are very long, in the sense that they have a long running time. By far the most famous of these is "Albuquerque", which is a favorite of many fans. As time has passed this song has gotten longer and longer, with Al listing more and more unavailable donuts from the Cheese Shop, and with him even restarting the song from scratch. Honestly Albuquerque is not my favorite song, but I can see why it was a fan favourite, and it has been interesting to see it grow and grow. Weird Al tried this trick a couple of other times to less success, with "Jackson Park Express" and (I guess?) the Frank Zappa homage "Genius in France" (which Zappa fans think is genius, but which rarely gets played live).
The "Yoda Chant" is another song which has grown in length. This is an interlude in the middle of live performances of "Yoda". This is another fan favourite, and it has gotten more and more elaborate over the years. The first few times I heard the Yoda Chant I thought it was in-jokey and dumb, but it has grown on me. Its comedy references are also surprisingly elaborate.
A third example is "Craigslist", the style parody based on the Doors. There is an interlude where the protagonist is on a phone call with his mother that seems to be getting more and more involved. (Unfortunately I find some of this interlude offputting, but maybe I am in the minority.)
Straight Covers
As mentioned above, Weird Al's collection of 77 cover songs in 70 shows featured prominently in my pandemic listening. These were cover songs sang with the original lyrics and original medleys, mostly played straight without humour.
There are a number of reasons I liked these cover songs so much. First, they did not ruin the source material. I can listen to these songs "in the wild" and appreciate both the original song and how closely Weird Al and his band could mimic them. Secondly, this series of covers was a real feat -- they played a different cover song each show, and for the most part they did an exemplary job. Yankovic often says he has the best backing band in the world, and there is no question they are immensely talented. Thirdly, for me this set of songs was a valuable education in popular culture. Most of the songs were hits I had not heard before. Now I sometimes hear these songs in supermarkets or blaring from car radios and I recognise them. Fourthly, this series of songs was an interesting window into the songs Yankovic found formative in his musical education.
It should come as no surprise that Weird Al is a good cover artist. He has parodied all kinds of songs in all kinds of genres, and creating convincing parodies required him (and his band) to understand the original songs well.
In later years Weird Al turned the straight parodies on its head. He performs parody medleys towards the end of his shows, sticking together snippets of moderately-popular songs without committing to singing the entire thing. In later tours he played medleys of his own lyrics set to different music, which are very popular even though they no longer represent their source material in either lyric or medlody. In some sense they are a way for Yankovic to thumb his nose at the music industry that fed him, illustrating that he somehow transcended the popularity of his source material.
Polka Medleys
Every Weird Al album features a polka medley consisting of the lyrics to popular songs set to polka music. Many of these polkas are nostalgic time capsules of whatever songs topped the charts at the time. Unlike straight parodies, upon listening to a few lines of some popular song (eg "So What" by P!nk, collected in the "Polka Face" polka), I want to listen to the original again. This is the opposite of ruining the song for me.
On the other hand, sometimes I seek out an original song I had never heard before the polka, and then I find the original disappointing. So maybe the polka medleys do some damage?
There are a couple of polkas that narrow their focus: "Bohemian Polka" is a polka cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody", and "The Hot Rocks Polka" consists exclusively of Rolling Stones songs. These polkas feel like oddballs, but they are pretty good too.
Style Parodies
In my mind Weird Al's style parodies are the pinnacle of his art, and I feel Weird Al (and many of his fans) agree -- both his 2018 and 2022 Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tours consisted mostly of these original compositions.
Unlike the straight parodies, in a style parody Weird Al builds up the representative sound of a band. Often he cuts and pastes elements from several of the original artists' hits. Then he adds new lyrics on top. The result is a song that is strongly reminicent of the original artist, but which does not ruin any of that original artist's compositions.
As previously documented, I am a moderate fan of Nine Inch Nails and The Beach Boys. Weird Al has style parodies for both these bands: "Germs" for NIN, "Trigger Happy" for early Beach Boys, and "Pancreas" for the Pet Sounds/SMiLE era. As a fan of these bands I consider Weird Al's versions to be masterful.
In some cases fans report that they started listening to the original artists because of the style parody. "Virus Alert" is a style parody of the band Sparks, and there are YouTube testimonials that the parody grew the original band's fanbase.
Many (maybe most) of my favorite Weird Al songs are style parodies. There are more here than I am willing to list, but some standouts include "Your Horoscope for Today" (based on Ska bands), "Sports Song" (based on marching band music), "First World Problems" (based on the Pixies), "Craigslist" (based on the Doors), "Close, but No Cigar" (based on Cake), "Don't Download This Song" (based on 1980s charity songs), "Dog Eat Dog" (based on the Talking Heads), "Mr Popeil" (based on the B-52s) and "I'll Sue Ya" (based on Rage Against the Machine). There are many more.
Unfortunately few of these style parodies have become big hits outside Yankovic's core fanbase. Overall I think many of them are his best work. Fortunately these days Yankovic seems content to make his living by milking his established fanbase, and that fanbase likes the style parodies a lot.