"Weird Al" Yankovic
Pop-music parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic has released more than a dozen studio albums over nearly three decades, outliving many of the one-hit-wonder acts he satirizes. Perhaps that's because he's more ambitious than the typical flavor-of-the-month band: He's also had a feature film (1989's UHF) and a children's TV series (CBS' The Weird Al Show in 1997). Neither were commercial or critical successes, but Yankovic remains tenacious—he's currently pitching a new movie and a TV series. Yankovic recently spoke to The A.V. Club while on tour with his latest album, Straight Outta Lynwood.
The A.V. Club: What makes one song more challenging than another to parody?
"Weird Al" Yankovic: There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me. [Laughs.] It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
AVC: Is there one in particular you really wanted to work but couldn't?
WAY: I wouldn't say there's one in particular. If you look at the polka medleys I've released on my albums throughout the years, those are littered with songs that I thought might have been good parodies, and yet I thought "Maybe this time around, I'd just polkacize this." [Laughs.]
AVC: In a Random Rules last year, Nirvana popped up, and you expressed dissatisfaction with the state of pop music. Doesn't that in turn affect the quality of your music?
WAY: For the parodies, certainly, the source material is going to affect the final product, because it's going to sound amazingly like whatever I'm parodying. It's suffered in comparison, I guess. It's not that I think pop music today is so bad, but I guess I was such a fan of that era of music. I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out. A lot of the music today doesn't excite me the same way. It's just a personal thing.
AVC: Is it harder for you to find songs to parody if you aren't engaged with current popular music?
WAY: Well, no, not at all. My personal taste doesn't enter into it a lot when I make my decisions as to what to parody. The primary consideration is whether a song is popular. Whether it's a rap, rock, or zydeco song, if it's captured the zeitgeist, it's fair game. Having said that, I tend to pick songs that I actually enjoy, because I know that I have to be living with that song for a big chunk of my life if I decide to do it.