I want to go on record saying that when I was in my twenties I had a bit of a falling out with my own faith. It was a very angry and hopeless period in my life, but somewhere in the midst of it I found myself turning to comedy to help me make sense of the world. By the time I found my faith again, comedy was so intertwined with it that the two were now inseparable. Comedy is the way I feel I can understand who or what God is.
With that said, I sometimes like to imagine what the Church of Comedy might look like. I figure the Monty Python team are the archbishops answering only to Pope Groucho I. Weird Al would have to be my youth pastor.
Kids of all ages from 27 to Methuselah can discover and appreciate Weird Al's music, but probably the target audience remains the Mad Magazine age bracket- just mature enough to have a sense of humor but not so grown up that they're no longer interesting. And maybe as music changes, Al changes with it, and his newer stuff is ultimately for a different audience than me. So I think it's fair to say in the spirit of love and tolerance how many different ways these next two albums make me want to pull my hair out.
Straight Outta Lynwood
I'm not sure exactly what happened or why, but the release of this album put Al in the mainstream's eye. Part of it may have had to do with Chamillionaire's enthusiastic support of Weird Al's presumanly autobiographical parody of Ridin'. White and Nerdy cracked Billboard's top ten (a first for a Weird Al song) and was certified platinum as a single. The song was big enough that the following year Universal Studios in Orlando had a rather unconvincing Weird Al lookalike lip-synch the song during the finale of the Bill and Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure. That's when you KNOW you've cracked the mainstream.
It's funny how that all happened because Atlantic Records track blocked the release of the James Blunt parody You're Pitiful. Equally funny is how both parodies could conceivably be about the same guy, from different perspectives. I'll talk more about White and Nerdy a little bit later.
White and Nerdy: Okay, it's a little bit later (I trimmed the dead space out of the blog). Well despite their best efforts Atlantic Records inadvertently did Al a favor because this song was (and is) fantastic. Maybe because the world in general has become nerdier with everybody owning the latest iThing and cinema revenue being dominated by comic books and Michael Bay playing with his action figures; this song just came at the right time. It didn't hurt that Al proved he was a better rapper than a lot of professional rappers, not to mention the music video where Donny Osmond INSTANTLY became cool. This album is off to a great start.
Pancreas: And just like that, it comes to a complete stop. I really cannot imagine how slow paced this album would have been if the James Blunt parody had opened it and then led into this as the first original. First the good: this song is musically complex and sophisticated. The bad: the only thing remotely interesting about the lyrics is the concept of it. In execution, it's like listening to a four minute podcast on the value of earthworms. And the ugly: Al has used the pancreas as a punchline way too many times in interviews and editorials and it was only funny 1.5 times. What inspired Al to go through so much trouble for no reason? Michael Bay perhaps?
Canadian Idiot: There's not much in the way of cleverness going from American Idiot to Canadian Idiot. I guess if you like Green Day (and I don’t) this song does what it sets out to do, but it just feels like Al was really having to force the muse to work on this one. If I’d heard this song prior to the rest of the album I would assume it was going to be in the Taco Grande spot, i.e. the weakest parody. Sadly this was not the case.
I’ll Sue Ya: Now here’s a song I can respect. I wonder why Al didn’t use this one as the second track as it has much more solidarity than Pancreas. A friend of mine says he uses this song for stress relief, and understandably so.
Polkarama!: Another B side polka. I don’t know if it’s the song selections or if Al is just getting tired of doing the polka medleys but Polkarama! just never seems to get going. I just looked at the song listing for the medley and was surprised to see that Somebody Told Me by The Killers (the only point the polka starts to breathe) was over halfway to the end when it should have been halfway through the first act. I gave Bohemian Polka two points, but I honestly think it's put together better, so this one is also getting two points.
Virus Alert: This is the Midnight Star of the album, and even though it gets a little too absurd too quickly the song still manages to find its good beats, so everything doesn’t just flow together in a single thought. I particularly love the ending where it sounds like we’re finishing the William Tell Overture.
Confessions Part III: We're back to R&B again, so naturally I’m agitated, but this song is honestly funny and Al sounds like he’s really enjoying the vocal overlaying. It's worth mentioning that even as a 'third part' to a story, Al's parody can stand on its own (mainly because he summarizes parts 1 and 2 in the first verse) leading to an added bonus joke of this is why the woman finally reaches her breaking point.
Weasel Stomping Day: I have no idea where this idea came from. I guess Al wanted a third holiday themed song about something horrible and he chose to come at it from a different angle. The result is fine with a little social commentary thrown onto the bonfire.
Close But No Cigar: How often do we get a Weird Al original you can dance to? It might be fun to try to compile a whole album's worth of Al's original content you could play for someone and them not be able to figure out they were listening to Weird Al.
Do I Creep You Out: This is an American Idol send up because Queen Amidala wanted it. This is Melanie light without the payoff. This is Girls Just Want to Have Lunch without the self-awareness. This song does nothing for the album except fill a quota.
Trapped in the Drive-Thru: Oh. God. You know, one thing I will say in favor of Do I Creep You Out: it's over. This song is not over, the CD was just smart enough to give up before I did. In all fairness I get the idea behind this, and at least it had an idea which is what Do I Creep You Out was missing. BUT IT WAS A BAD IDEA! Shaggy dog stories are never funny, they're tedious. Albuquerque wasn't a shaggy dog story because it had mini-sketches assembled into a convoluted narrative. This song doesn't go anywhere (except for the brief salvation in Led Zeppelin and then we're back in Hell)and that doesn't make it funny. Leave that crap for Seth MacFarlane, eventually his audience will figure out how tedious it is. You know how you can usually hear a Weird Al parody without hearing the original and still be privy to the joke? This parody seems to depend on your pre-existing hatred of R. Kelly. This song gave me a hatred of R. Kelly which wasn't there before. You think that's what Al was going for?
Don't Download This Song: My first time through, I thought this was a weak way to end the album, but it was really feelings left over from the previous two songs. On its own terms, this song is delightful, getting in its satire on both sides of the issue. It also has what I felt was the biggest laugh on Straight Outta Lynwood although you have to turn the volume up pretty loud to hear it.
Conclusion:
The originals have a much better batting average than the polka/parodies on this album. Pancreas gets 2 points for thoroughness on the music front. Canadian Idiot and Polkarama! also get 2 points each. Now I'm probably being a tad inflexible by only giving Do I Creep You Out and Trapped in the Drive-Thru 1 point each, so I'll toss in 1 extra point for the two of them to fraction out how ever they deem appropriate. Everything else gets 3 points for a total of 30 out of 36, or a score of 83, a B. Well, that was better than I was expecting.
Alpocalypse
Five years later...
Al was experimenting with the ability to download songs right away, which meant five of the tracks on this album were available a few years prior to Alpocalypse's release as a digital collection called Internet Leaks. In retrospect I think this may have been a mistake, owing to the fact that the album as a whole made no first impression on me. With Perform This Way being available a few months before the release date and the polka airing on Youtube it was up to three parodies and two originals to really grab the audience.
I almost wish after Internet Leaks Al had just released an album with those five tracks and a few odds and ends which had evaded past albums (Spy Hard, Polkamon, Headline News). I would have bought that.
But let's pretend none of that happened and we're looking at Alpocalypse for the first time with fresh eyes, an open mind, and whatever respect for Miley Cyrus still existed in 2011. We may as well, it's not going to improve the album's score.
Perform This Way: Great parody, decent song, snide comment, etc. What I really want to mention here is the drama behind this parody's release. If you don't know the story, Al had the idea for a Lady Gaga parody (and the rest of the world sort of demanded he do it) and he sent word to her people for the okay. He received word that she needed to hear the parody before agreeing to it, so he wrote out the lyrics and sent them back, getting the response from her manager that "No, she needed to hear it first." Al recorded the parody and sent it to her and got word back that she said no. So out of frustration he just released it for free online. Then internet blew up over this on Twitter and Yahoo and probably xoJane (or it should have) calling for Gaga's head. Lady Gaga (that is officially the STUPIDEST stage name by the way) responded saying her manager never actually sent her the parody, signed off on it, claimed to be a Weird Al fan and called the song "empowering". I'm going on record saying that I don't believe her. I believe she said no and then backtracked when she realized that Al had more passionate fans than she did. And my reasoning is the minimal amount of effort she did to defuse the situation. A Weird Al fan would have called Al personally to apologize and fired their manager. I believe Lady Gaga thought she was above Al's parody of her. Until I hear some actual sincerity over the whole thing I maintain she was never worthy of it.
CNR: Okay, so having to bounce back from that rant we turn to this style parody of The White Stripes, a band best known for needing a bass guitarist. I didn't care for this song the first few times mainly because it just seemed too 'out there' without actually being funny, but something in the downbeats of the guitar chords finally won me over.
TMZ: Kind of like Don't Download This Song Al does a great job taking shots at both sides of this topic. It's a really good second parody for this album, and curiously the second song in a row without a vowel in the title.
Skipper Dan: There's parody, there's spoof, there's dark humor and there's absurdity. But if there was ever a song Weird Al did that just hit the sweet spot on the very essence of comedy, this is it. This song comes dangerously close to sadness without ever crossing the line that it achieves a perfect balance on that dividing line. In the song, Dan is defeated but not because the world is against him, but because his expectations were too high. Yes, it's sad that his life didn't turn out the way he wanted, but he's also not the victim he perceives himself to be. This is why we can laugh at him and sympathize with him simultaneously.
Polka Face: I don't know why, probably because of the previous song, but this polka always sounds like a Fantasyland attraction to me. It's not a three point polka, but it's one of the better ones.
Craigslist: I am not a fan of Jim Morrison but I'm glad that Al is, because this song sounds great. And it works. I don't understand why it works, but the concept of Morrison screaming out the name of the website but making no statement for or against it just seems appropriate somehow.
Party in the CIA: Despite Al's best efforts with the lyrics, this song sucks. the original music is boring and monotonous; the fact that it's Miley Cyrus is a bonus on the detestability scale. Even though this song represents the point where I always skip to the end of the album, it gets two points because of how well Al did with the words.
Ringtone: One of the things a Weird Al album and a Queen album have in common is the variety of musical styles contained therein. So with Al choosing to do a style-parody of Queen I have to wonder why he chose this particular style of out of the whole Queen-spectrum he had to choose from. Like Pancreas, he put a lot into it, but the result is really not interesting. Two points for effort. I'll probably never sit through the whole song again.
Another Tattoo: At this point I'm beginning to worry that Al is just out of ideas. Any joke that could be done with this concept was already tackled by Groucho with Lydia the tattooed Lady and that song had a legitimate melody line. I'm also getting concerned about Mandatory Fun. I don't listen to the radio, but it sounds like every song in the past eight years can be performed by anyone who learns three chords. Another two points for effort, but my patience is wearing out.
If That Isn't Love: And it's worn out. Hanson has actually had some catchy songs but Al didn't seems to turn to them for inspiration here. I think it's also time to retire the anti-love song. That genre had a great run, but even though this is a fresh approach to it, this song doesn't feel fresh. It feels tired. In fact, this is the first Weird Al album in ages where the originals are starting to suffer.
Whatever You Like: I'd like a better song. Was there nothing by Linkin Park Al could have done a parody to? You know, that's great that Al could record a parody and release it online while the original was still on the charts. It doesn't mean this song should have been done. I've been using adjectives like monotonous, tedious, and boring a lot lately. This is where I trade them up for nouns like depression, migraine and Evanescence.
Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me: I'm in such a bad mood now that I'm ready to take it out on anything, and this is the closest song to me. Sorry, but life isn't fair. So what can I gripe about here? Well it sounds like Don't Download This Song all over again, so there's that; not that that was bad, just a little repetitive. It's also touted as a Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf style parody, so Al should really be belting it out operatically. Oh who am I kidding? I love this song! It's not enough to rescue the album but it's a really nice consolation prize.
Conclusion:
Perfect scores on the first half of the album except for a 2.5 for the polka. The next three songs get 2 each. The next two get 1 point each. 3 points for the last song. 28.5 for the whole album for a score of 79. A deserved C.
Meta-Conclusion:
So how do the past thirteen albums stack up against each other. Based on the results of the parameters I usually followed, here is a list of each album and its respective score in ascending order. My biggest surprises were the low score for "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D and the fact that Straight Outta Lynwood did better than Even Worse and Off the Deep End.
Mandatory Fun hits shelves on July 15th, and you can expect my scathing review of it by that evening. Any predictions on where it's going to be ranked on this list?
Alapalooza
|
72 |
C
|
1993
|
"Weird
Al" Yankovic
|
75 |
C
|
1983
|
Polka
Party!
|
77 |
C
|
1986
|
"Weird
Al" Yankovic in 3-D
|
79 |
C
|
1984
|
Alpocalypse
|
79 |
C
|
2011
|
Even
Worse
|
82 |
B
|
1988
|
Off
the Deep End
|
83 |
B
|
1992
|
Straight
Outta Lynwood
|
83 |
B
|
2006
|
Dare
to Be Stupid
|
87 |
B
|
1985
|
Bad
Hair Day
|
89 |
B
|
1996
|
UHF
(SUMO SOAP)
|
95 |
A
|
1989
|
Poodle
Hat
|
97 |
A
|
2003
|
Running
with Scissors
|
99 |
A
|
1999
|
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