Best Ever Albums

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Mon, 3 May 2021 00:22:23 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 05/03/2021 04:22

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Good Old Days"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Style Parody of James Taylor

Best lyrics:

"I can still remember good old Mr. Fender
Who ran the corner grocery store
Oh, he'd stroll down the aisle with a big friendly smile
And he'd say, "Howdy", when you walked in the door

Always treated me nice, gave me kindly advice
I don't know why I set fire to his place
Oh, I'll never forget the day, I bashed in his head
Well you should've seen the look on his face"

Well, that tells you all that you need to know about this song. It's a sweet-sounding acoustic ballad with darkly-juxtaposed lyrics. It's hilarious, and I love it.

Song Rating: A-

Tiny desk concert anyone?

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Closed that album rather quick now, didnt' I?

I had previously said that it's one of my favorites, which it definitely is, but I realized that half the songs are A's and the other half is B- and below. I guess it still makes out to a B+, but I can't quite give it an A. That'll be reserved for the next album, and maybe one down the road...

Album Rating: B+

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Sun, 2 May 2021 23:57:44 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 05/03/2021 03:57

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Twister"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Parody of the Beastie Boys, Board Games

Music Video: No

Best lyrics: none, vague Brooklyn noises

And back to something bad. The concept is funny, I guess. The Beastie Boys singing about a board game, but it just seems so out of place. It's also only a minute long, and it doesn't parody any of their songs. It would have been so much better to have an actual parody of "You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party" or something. Seems like a total missed opportunity.

Song Rating: F

MORE FAN MADE VIDEOS

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Sun, 2 May 2021 23:49:58 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 05/03/2021 03:49

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Velvet Elvis"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Style Parody of several "Police" songs, Elvis (rock n roll)

Music Video: I wish

Best lyric: Don't need no lava lamp/ Don't need no soap on a rope/ No pictures of Mexican kids with those really big eyes/ Or dogs playing poker, oh

YEEEEEESSSSSS!

Much better than the previous song, and it's one of my favorite of Al's style parodies. I loved this song when I was a kid, and, to bring back to the anecdote I mentioned earlier, I used to fall asleep to this cassette tape, which was usually around this song for whatever reason.

I love The Police and Al's band does such a great job with covering several of the bands idiosyncrasies in the same song here. Much better than "King of Suede" from the In 3-D.

The song is about a man who has found the ultimate in home decor, a black velvet painting of Elvis Presley. Funny story, the first time I ever saw Weird Al in person was at an Elvis parade that was in Kansas City for some reason.

Song Rating: A

How about a live version? Hell yeah!

Link

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Sun, 2 May 2021 23:37:20 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 05/03/2021 03:37

I've lost sight of what's most important to me.

Here's getting back to best diary that you or I have ever looked at.

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Alimony"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Cover of "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol

Music Video: No

Best Lyric: "Workin' three jobs just to stay in debt now"

Uhhh, yeah, not a good one. Mostly because the original song is not great. Poor choice to parody, and it's not fun subject matter either.

Song Rating: D-

13 year old Youtube videos are incredible.

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:57:40 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 12/22/2020 05:57

Fischman wrote:

Something unexpected I just stumbled upon:

Link

Nice!

Al has all sorts of interesting videos that he posts every once in a blue moon. Always entertaining. I also still have no idea how an accordion works.

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Fischman — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:37:56 GMT

Author: Fischman

Posted: 12/15/2020 16:37

Something unexpected I just stumbled upon:

Link

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Thu, 5 Nov 2020 23:07:33 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/06/2020 04:07

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Melanie"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Creeps, Bad Love Songs, Original (sounds in the vein of Hearland Rock)

Music Video: No

Best Lyric: "I'm sure our love would last forever/ Or are you too dumb to realize that?"

This kind of song becomes more regular on Al albums from this point forward. The creepy lover. "Such A Groovy Guy" was on the first album. "One More Minute" is more about a jilted lover. But the protagonist of "Melanie" is just a certified freak. In a scene out of "Rear Window", this proto-nice guy buys a telescope and happens to come across a beautiful woman living in the apartment complex across from his. He's obsessed. Nice guy turns into incel pretty quickly. Then he kills himself. I'm not shitting you. Easily one of the darkest songs Al has ever written; it's borderline worrisome.

"You weren't impressed when I tattooed
Your name across my forehead
You wouldn't listen when I promised to be true
I couldn't stand it, so I jumped out
From the sixteenth story window right above you
Now I may be dead but I still love you"

Jesus Christ.

Anyways, musically the song is actually the best thing that Al had written as an original song at that point, which makes the juxtaposition of the lyrics even more darkly humorous. It's really a nice-sounding song. Something like Tom Petty (which is listed on the Al wiki as a style parody, but that's not official).

BTW, I found out that I'm not the only person to do what I'm doing. I guess Nathan Rabin, who I have an Al book from, made another book a couple years ago where he went over every song. Here's his blog on "Melanie". He's a bit more long-winded than I.

https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place...soundtrack

Song Rating: A-

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Thu, 5 Nov 2020 22:47:45 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/06/2020 03:47

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Lasagna"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Food, Parody of La Bamba, but it's actually a traditional song, so Al didn't have to ask permission to record it.

Music Video: No (However, a 40 second excerpt was made for Weird Al's TV Show a decade later.)

Best Lyric: "Ay, you getting too skinny, you gotta to eat/ Ay, mange, mange"

The Italian side of my family never lived around us. They were either dead by the time I was born, or they were up in Pennsylvania where they were originally from. So, little me liked this song, because it talked about all of those great Italian-American foods that I enjoyed so much, but I never got to share with those relatives. It doesn't get played as often by me now, but I think it's some good harmless fun. Turns out Al Yankovic is actually part Italian from his mother's side, so he gets a pass for the bad accent. Musically the song work well, because it's one of the few songs where Al's accordion playing fits the style of music playing. It sounds great.

Song Rating B-

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Thu, 5 Nov 2020 22:30:32 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/06/2020 03:30

Yeah, that song and the Harrison one are prime earworm tunes.

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"I Think I'm A Clone Now"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Parody of the song "I Think We're Alone Now" performed by Tiffany (of course originally popularized by Tommy James & The Shondells)

Music Video: No (But there's a video with footage of the Star Wars prequels 😁 )

Best Lyric: Eh....

Ok, now what this song lacks in great humor, it more than makes up for by actually improving upon the Tiffany song it parodies. Like, Al's version is legitimately better produced than the original. It's not quite as trebley as the Tiffany one. It has a fuller sound.

Song Rating: C+

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Fischman — Thu, 5 Nov 2020 09:44:02 GMT

Author: Fischman

Posted: 11/05/2020 14:44

Tha1ChiefRocka wrote:

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"This Song Is Just Six Words Long"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Style Parody of George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" (which was a song originally written by Rudy Clark and performed by James Ray)

Music Video: No

Best Lyric: Just the concept of the song is funny.

Whoops, I went out of order. This should have came after Vanna White.

Anyways, the whole concept is making fun of the repetitive nature of the song "Got My Mind Set On You" covered by George Harrison. It's well-executed, and it plainly makes a lot of fun of pop music in general, but it lacks the zaniness of some of Al's more out there parodies.

Song Rating: C+

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BTW, Al loved George. Here he is doing one of his "interviews" with him.

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And, this is as good a time as any to post this video, but here's his incredible cover of "What Is Life" at the Georgefest.

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A+ for this performance :D

This is also proof that you don't need many words to get a song totally stuck in your head.
Gonna' take me all day to shake this one.

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

LedZep — Thu, 5 Nov 2020 09:20:28 GMT

Author: LedZep

Posted: 11/05/2020 14:20

Tha1ChiefRocka wrote:

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Fat"

From the album Even Worse

File Under: Food, Parody of "Bad" by Michael Jackson

Music Video: YES

Best Music Video Moment: Pinwheel blowing in the wind.

Best Lyric: And my shadow weighs 42 lbs.

What it took for Weird Al to come back for good was a cover of his original target, Michael Jackson. Of course, he risked just being known as "the guy who covers Michael Jackson", but, at this point he, "thought it was the end of his career." When he saw the music video for "Bad", he immediately thought of a sequel to record.

Here's a big blurb from the wikipedia.

He later said, "I was still primarily known as the 'Eat It' guy and I didn't want to become known as the guy who just rides Michael's coattails." He later relented and sought out Jackson for permission. Jackson, a fan of Yankovic's work, had already let Yankovic parody his 1983 hit single "Beat It". When presented with the new potential parody, Jackson not only approved it, but let Yankovic use his own Moonwalker subway set for the music video. Yankovic later presented Jackson with a gold record of Even Worse after the album sold over 500,000 copies. Jackson was so pleased with the song and video, he ordered twelve copies to give to his friends. Yankovic later said, "He doesn't have to let me do this kind of stuff. [...] The only reason he would let me is because he has a great sense of humor."

The music video for the song features a leather-clad Yankovic "expanding to 800 pounds and bouncing around a subway set." To find suitable back-up dancers, ads were placed in Los Angeles newspapers for "Very Fat Dancers". One of the men used in the video was actually a pizza delivery man who had delivered food to the casting offices. Due to the music video, "Fat" became one of Yankovic's biggest hits.[ Although only managing to peak at number 99 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song's music video got extensive play on MTV, which helped the album attain platinum status. In addition, "Fat" was later nominated and won a Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video at the 1989 Grammy Awards, Yankovic's second Grammy Award.

I'd say it's on par with "Eat It" and, for my personal tastes, exceeds it in most ways.

Song Rating: A

Music Video Rating: A

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One of my favourites. That video is as nonsensical and fun as anything he's done.

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Wed, 4 Nov 2020 23:51:59 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/05/2020 04:51

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Wed, 4 Nov 2020 23:22:50 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/05/2020 04:22

Fischman wrote:

I'd never heard Stuck in a Closet With Vanna White before. Very cool/amusing in a number of ways.

Nice! Then, I'd wager you may not have heard the next either...

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"You Make Me"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Original, Nonsense Song, Style Parody of Oingo Boingo

Music Video: No (But there's a good Newgrounds-era fanmade one)

Best Lyric: "When I'm with you, I don't know whether I should study Neurosurgery/ or go to see the Care Bears movie"

Al doing another one of his better style parodies. This time it's of Oingo Boingo, another artist whose songs lend themselves to Al's style well. Once again Jim West lays down a great guitar track, the whole band is great, really, and Al delivers some of his strange love lyrics. I think this song could be taken two different ways.

A) The person in question makes him crazy from how much he hates them
B) The person in question makes him crazy from how madly in love them he is.

I think it's B.

Song Rating: A-

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Here's the Newgrounds video.

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Fischman — Tue, 3 Nov 2020 09:35:43 GMT

Author: Fischman

Posted: 11/03/2020 14:35

I'd never heard Stuck in a Closet With Vanna White before. Very cool/amusing in a number of ways.

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Mon, 2 Nov 2020 21:18:23 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 11/03/2020 02:18

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Even Worse by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Stuck In A Closet With Vanna White"

From the album "Even Worse"

File Under: Original, Nonsense Song

Music Video: No

Best Lyric: "See, I'm naked in church when I meet a dinosaur/ Try to run, but my feet have been nailed to the floor/ Then a midget pushes me through a revolving door
And I'm back in the very same place I was before"

This is probably one of if not my favorite of Al's original songs. It's funny, and it ROCKS. The guitar solo in this song is actually incredible. (Shoutout to Jim West) And who hasn't had a strange recurring dream before? I know the feeling ot fhe protagonist in this song all too well. I really don't have anything else to say about it. It's just a good song.

Song Rating: A

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 01:22:50 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 10/29/2020 05:22

An aside.

The next two albums are my favorite Weird Al albums.

When I was young, and I'm talking about in between the ages of like 7-10, (I could probably extend that to 12) "Even Worse" and "Off the Deep End", were probably my most listened to albums ever. We had a cassette tape that had both of the albums on it. "Even Worse" on the first side and "Off the Deep End" was on the B Side. We had a little protable cassette player that I could listen to with headphones, and, when I moved into my brother's old room, his stereo cassette player. I shit you not, I would go to sleep while exclusively listening to these two albums. So, keep that in mind when I'm giving ratings to songs. 😁

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:58:32 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 10/29/2020 04:58

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Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:04:57 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 10/24/2020 04:04

First of all, they tried to release "Dare To Be Stupid" as a single in 86' to help out his sales when it was used in the Transformers movie.

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I don't think he ever missed any questions on Hollywood Squares.

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He was on an episode of freaking Double Dare with Lou Ferrigno. HELL YEAH!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7thsw8

And on the Nick Rocks Video House Party (5 minute mark)

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And an early episode of Remote Control on MTV

Link

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 23:33:10 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 10/24/2020 03:33

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Polka Party! by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Overall Rating: C to C+

So, it's probably his worst album, but that doesn't mean it is the worst album ever. Now, keep in mind, these ratings are just vs. other "Weird Al" Albums. If this were just rated as an album by itself, then it's probably closer to a D. However, there are some obscure greats on here, and the two singles were well-made.

It was his lowest selling album, and it only reached number 177 on the billboard charts, which is pretty dreadful. "In 3-D" made it all the way to 17. No A+ songs on here either. However, it still was nominated for a grammy anyway.

A lot of critics and even Al himself thought that his career might be over after it flopped.

Yankovic was dismayed by the album's lackluster reception. He noted that he "thought it was the end of [his] career". Yankovic explained that "I figured I'd peaked with 'Eat It' and 'Like a Surgeon' and now people were slowly forgetting about me and I was well on my way to obscurity."

I often think of this line from King of the Hill.

Link

The next few years were fraught with guest appearances on TV Shows and even Hollywood Squares to try and maintain some relevancy. Luckily, Al's next album would fare much better.

But, before I move on to that, let's look at some of those other TV appearances between '86 & '88.

Re: Reviewing Every Weird Al album Song by Song

Tha1ChiefRocka — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 23:25:01 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 10/24/2020 03:25

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Polka Party! by "Weird Al" Yankovic

"Christmas At Ground Zero"

From the album Polka Party!

File Under: Christmas, Original, Style Parody of Phil Spcetor-era Christmas songs

Music Video: YES

Best Music Video Moment: Ronald Reagan

Best Lyric: Too many to mention.

"We can dodge debris while we trim the tree/Underneath the mushroom cloud"

"You might hear some reindeer on your rooftop/ Or Jack Frost on your windowsill/ But if someone's climbing down your chimney/ You better load your gun and shoot to kill"

I'm not joking when I say this is one of the best songs made during/influenced by the Cold War. Easily one of Al's darkest songs, it was actually banned from some radio stations, because they deemed it to be too violent to play. Which was not good for Al considering that this was the only other single on the album besides "Living With A Hernia". I kind of forgot how much I enjoyed it until I just put it on a couple times in a row. It's funny, it's sardonic, it makes me want to play Fallout. I love the Phil Spector-influenced sound too; it gives it that extra push it needs to be a memorable tune on it's own. The video is great with it's pastiche of 50s era Christmas footage and thermonuclear explosions. Ronald Reagan and Bert The Turtle even make an appearance.

Song Rating: A

Video Rating: A-

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