Urban issues are not unique to one city. Casting around for for successes to copy, we have to examine what it means to remix and adapt a concept to a new situation.
Really, there’s no better teacher for doing that right than “Weird” Al Yankovic.
Since his time sending parody songs to the Dr. Demento show in the late 1970’s through a peak in the heyday of MTV, Weird Al is now in long service to society as the ambassador of pop culture’s goofy mirror universe. Long enough to warrant New York Times retrospectives of his career and Salon think pieces about his music as antidote to capitalism.
While rewriting pop songs as homages to flavors of ice cream may sound like trivial nonsense, it’s not easy. For anyone who’s hasn’t tried, you get one good pun or perhaps a wacky chorus, then start spiraling into the depths of finding a rhyme for penguin. Because penguins are always funny. There’s a reason they recruit comedy writers from Cambridge and Harvard. Or Cal Poly’s architecture school. Now Weird Al’s been doing this for forty years.
Professor Yankovic’s Class Is In Session
He gets the basics right. The parody has to sound like the song he’s covering. Even through his accordion and hard working singing voice, the music is there. It’s impossible to sell people songs that don’t sound good. It can be strange, ridiculous, or wacky. But Brian May has to know you’re singing his songs. Yankovic’s effort as a musician is plain and successful. Even the song Harvey the Wonder Hamster – which is 26 seconds long – never felt like it was a slacker track. When played with a complete string orchestra, it is DIVINE.
Though there’s some balance of fair use and parody, Yankovic always clears his songs with the original musicians. Newer artists say that a Weird Al parody means they’ve made it to a significant level of success. But it also shows a level of mutual respect and professionalism within a creative, often combative, industry.
Getting those basics correct allows something unexpected: the ability to be unexpected. From the 11 minute long sauerkraut joke that is the song Albuquerque, to getting the endorsement and backup guitar of Mark Knopfler, the weirdest part of Weird Al’s music is that his songs can continue to surprise with joyful creativity. It can be unexpectedly dissonant, where the song Word Crimes turns Robin Thicke’s borderline Blurred Lines into a lesson in proofreading one’s tweets. It can be unexpectedly truth telling, such as Perform This Way moving from a parody of Lady Gaga to a defense of her creativity. Or unexpectedly sweet, like the entirety of his movie UHF:
