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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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