“If you had told me 30 years ago that I would be famous for recording parody albums, I would have laughed. And if I had added that 40 years after my breakthrough, I would still have sold my songs, I would have told you you’re crazy”, says Weird Al Yankovic in an interview for the release of his biopic The Weird Al Yankovic Story.
However, the past year has shown Weird Al’s career has no plans to retire.
In addition to being ready to tell his life in a somewhat documentary and heavily fictionalized story starring Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter”), the parody singer-songwriter is back on the best-selling album charts after releasing his latest album Mandalorian Fun. .
Like any other triumph, Yankovic marks his number one position on the Billboard chart with food. A tradition that goes back to the first famous parody of him Eat It, a comic parody of Michael Jackson’s Beat It.
“People love fame overnight and in most cases their impressions are exaggerated, but for me the fame really came in less than 24 hours. Amazingly, MTV started playing one of my songs, and from a guy who had been invisible all his life, I suddenly became someone that people on the street sang, “the artist told the Guardian.
The song that made him popular, first in the United States and then around the world, was a satirical reading of Michael Jackson’s now famous Beat It song.
In 1984, Yankovic released the video, mostly mocking American consumerism, and surprisingly, even to himself, he found that audiences were ready to see the irony in their unquenchable appetite.
For decades after this success, Jankovic claimed that the main credit went to the king of pop, Michael Jackson, who allowed his song to be uploaded.
Although parodies are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Weird Al has always been collegiate towards songwriters on the world stage. Before any parody, permission is asked from the artist or music company that owns the rights to the piece.
In the 1990s, this habit created the first and only scandal of his career. The misunderstanding is with rapper Coolio and his Gangsta’s Paradise, that Weird Al transforms Amish Paradise to make fun of Amish daily life.
For some reason, however, Coolio decided that Yankovic was teasing him and threatened the parody artist of a lawsuit if he didn’t remove the video.
But he never made it to court, both because the team behind the rapper managed to convince him that attacking comedians was not a good idea, and because Coolio became more familiar with the copyright process and realized that once sold the song you are on the music distributor, you should forget the pretensions.
Despite his tough stance in 1996, the rapper made a 180-degree turn on the song before he died, admitting he was wrong in trying to thwart Amish Paradise.
“I sat down and really thought about it. I was like, ‘Coolio, who the hell do you think you are?’ Michael Jackson has a parody song and he didn’t get mad. Then I called Al and apologized. I was really stupid, “the rapper told students in 2011.
And although he himself admits that his ego spurred him into a war in absentia with Weird Al Yankovic, according to the creator of the parody, the conflict was the result of a misunderstanding.
Unlike the ups and downs of communicating with Coolio, borrowing songs with Michael Jackson went smoothly.
The king of pop is a huge Weird Al fan and gives him carte blanche to parody any of his videos. In this sense, in addition to Eat It, Yankovic’s catalog also includes Fat, an ironic parody of Michael Jackson’s iconic song Bad.
To date, however, Weird Al hasn’t performed either track, due to the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” in which two of Michael Jackson’s former proteges accuse him of pedophilia.
Like other popular names in the US entertainment industry, Weird Al also chose to distance himself from Jackson by excluding Bad and Eat It from his performances. However, he never denied that the king of pop played a significant role in launching his parody career.
For a guy who grew up in California and spent most of his childhood in the room instead of out with friends, this success can be said to be a testament to the American dream maxim come true.
Al’s talent was born of loneliness and rejection. Until college, the artist had no friends and spent his time in the bedroom, playing the accordion and watching the comedy “Monty Python”. The children avoided this, leading her mother to suspect that she was being bullied by her classmates and, to test her suspicions, she spied on Al with binoculars while he was at school.
At 16, Yankovic graduated from high school earlier than his peers because he was part of the advanced class group of highly intelligent students and was accepted into architecture at the University of California. There also appears his nickname Weird Al, invented as a mockery by the boys in the dorms.
“I was a skinny, short-sighted boy with no social skills who didn’t drink, didn’t smoke or hang out with girls. Others thought it was weird and rejected me from the pack,” Yankovic told The New York Times.
And to enhance their impressions, Weird Al replenishes his wardrobe with colorful Hawaiian shirts and flip flops and decorates his room with ceramic frogs.
The exit from public exile came in 1977 on an amateur night when he performed his banjo song at the Cat Polly Club. He wears his big glasses, his small mustache and his chaotic energy on stage, with which he steals the cheers from the audience .
“Then, for the first time in my life, I got positive feedback from people and I guess that unlocked something in my fantasy,” Yankovic suggests.
This support gave him the courage to drop out of college and focus on his humorous work, which paid off in 1984 with the parody Eat It.
“For decades I tried to please Al Yankovic’s boyfriend who spent all his time in the room. The ridiculous music gave him the energy that made him feel good. It was also a signal to people who, like him, were lonely. Today we are already a crowd, united by isolation and we continue to multiply, listening to our absurd music “, Yankovic also shares.
