April Fools! Weird Al Rocks the 90s!

Well, I had planned to do this article last year, following up from my first one, but totally dropped the ball as the concept slipped my mind entirely.  Better late than never, in any case.  Picking up with his soundtrack to UHF, we'll be mostly focusing on his 90s albums.  Rock music wasn't as much of a focus for him during this decade, as pop music drifted around a lot of genres by then.  Still, there's plenty of curious rock songs through the years that still put a smile on my face.

After his second Michael Jackson parody was a big success, Weird Al turned to making a movie in an attempt to parody film and television.  While it flopped in the box office, it's become a cult classic, and honestly is a pretty good representation of his style of humor.  Certainly a fun film, at the very least.  However, the official soundtrack was more like one of his typical albums, only featuring a few songs from the movie, as well as some of the kooky commercials as little audio skits.

When it comes to rock music, the title track is a solid stand out.  Rather than be a parody of anything specific, it's just a fun rock song with a very catchy riff.  It's probably my favorite song on the album. They also take the opportunity to write another goofy sci-fi film song with "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet Near Mars" and the polka medley this time is a collection of Rolling Stones songs.  "Generic Blues" ends up being a fun dose of dark humor, making a big deal about minor annoyances, but supposedly, B.B. King said it was one of the best blues songs he'd heard.  However, the highest profile rock song is a curious parody of Dire Straits, taking their big MTV hit and replacing the lyrics with those of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.  While it fits well with the themes of his movie, the song isn't one of his better efforts, in my opinion.

The failure of his movie left Weird Al scrambling, and when Michael Jackson understandably declined to let him parody his next hit "Black and White," the musical king of comedy felt that perhaps his time was over.  Fortunately, with the arrival of Nirvana and the explosion of grunge, he found his next target, even going so far as to parody the Nevermind cover.  "Smells Like Nirvana" was a massive hit for him, and its easy to see why, making fun of the Cobain's mumbled lyrics while maintaining the apathetic tone of the original.  It's been a staple of his live shows ever since.

As for the rest of the album, there are a few interesting rock songs, all style parodies instead making fun of a given song.  "Trigger Happy" is a curious take on surf rock and guns.  "I Was Only Kidding" is a very sarcastic, heavy song that I think gets close to Megadeth in some ways.  (I think it would be rather fun if Dave Mustaine covered that song in his snarling style!)  "Airline Amy" and "When I Was Your Age" are more typical, but fun, rock songs, and while "You Don't Love Me Anymore" was just a spoof of acoustic ballads in general, the music video ended up being a poke at Extreme's "More Than Words."  The standard polka medley even has some Metallica, Warrant, and Mötley Crüe.  While the Nirvana song dominates the popularity of this album, the rest of the songs prove that Weird Al had plenty of gas in the tank, allowing him to carry on through this decade.

Now that he was in the swing of things again, he didn't hesitate, putting out Alapalooza the following year, the title riffing on the Lollapalooza festival that had just started.  While the main song was more about parodying the Jurassic Park movie with a symphonic pop song from the 60s, there was still plenty of rock to be had.  The shift to alternative rock is certainly felt, with a pair of Red Hot Chili Peppers hits turned into a song about the Flinstones and a style parody of REM called "Frank's 2000" TV." 

However, the big rock songs include a strange parody of Aerosmith's "Living on the Edge" about spoiled food that's now "Living in the Fridge," and a fun style-parody of AC/DC titled "Young, Dumb, and Ugly."  "She Never Told Me She Was a Mime" is another solid rocker, with an amusing premise.  (You think he would have noticed.)  But the best song on the album, in my opinion, is a full polka version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."  Instead of doing a medley songs, Weird Al and his band do the whole song in his bouncy style and getting plenty of work out of his accordion.  Obviously, Queen would have given him permission (as that's how Weird Al does things), but I would like to have been a fly on the wall when the esteemed classic rock band heard the thing the first time.

After a few more years, Weird Al would follow up with Bad Hair Day, featuring one of his most famous (and controversial) parodies with "Amish Paradise," even making fun of Coolio's hair on the cover.  As for the rock stuff, he's followed the trend of the expanding alternative rock scene, including parodies of U2 and Soul Asylum, and even naming his polka medley "The Alternative Polka," covering bands from R.E.M. and Nine Inch Nails to Foo Fighters and Soundgarden.  He also did a style parody of grunge with "Calling In Sick," which ends up being a solid track full of thick guitars and lazy angst.  The album ends with one of his starkest bits of morbid humor with "The Night Santa Went Crazy," a crazier holiday single than "Christmas at Ground Zero."

Beyond that, though, there really isn't much that really fits in with the kind of stuff I cover on my blog.  Still, this is a fun album, and one of his most popular for good reason.

From here, he would only get bigger.  For his next album, he was able to time "The Saga Begins," a song about Star Wars Episode I, in time with that movie's theatrical release.  Parodying "American Pie" by Don McLean and getting the music video up on MTV as the movie was delighting and disappointing audiences around the world, it was a massive success.  However, the rest of the album, while quite good, again doesn't really match my blog very well.  Much of it is either pop, hip-hop, or alternative rock, including The Offspring, Barenaked Ladies, Nine-Inch Nails, and ska bands like Mighty Mighty Bosstones, with the polka medley catching artists such as Smash Mouth, Matchbox Twenty, Third Eye Blind, and Marilyn Manson.  Still, I admit that, because this album came out right when I was starting to become a fan, I listened to this a lot through my high school years.

However, this album is topped off with a kind of modern prog masterpiece in "Albuquerque."  Not necessarily making fun of any particular artist (though Wikipedia lists a few), this is a straight-ahead hard rock number that goes for over 11 minutes, and is a blast to listen to all the way through!  The bizarre topic changes as part of an ongoing adventure may make it a little hard to follow, but it's peak Weird Al comedy with a very catchy chorus.  And yes, he has played it New Mexico.  While this album would be another big success, ensuring his continued relevance, it's hard to say much about it, even as a joke for a rock and metal music blog.

And I know this will only get harder as I continue, but I do want to complete his album discography with one more article.  I have enjoyed going back over his albums, though, picking through to find rock moments to talk about.  Weird Al is a staple of any good musical library, and I won't hear otherwise!

April Fools! Weird Al Rocks the 80s!

To be honest, I've been thinking about doing this for a few years now.  I've gone back and forth on what kind of April Fool's article I could write, but being a massive Weird Al Yankovic fan, I couldn't really resist talking about his songs, both the parodies and originals.  I became a fan in middle school through a friend at church, and since then, I've been jamming his stuff and enjoying his quirky sense of humor.  Of course, Weird Al has always focused on whatever was mainstream music at the time, so he often does songs in a lot of styles, including pop, jazz, hip hop, and country.  For this article, I'll just focus on his rock songs of the 1980s.  

His first major single famously took The Knack's song "My Sharona" and turned it into an anthem to lunchmeat.  "My Bologna" would set the tone for his many songs about food.  While hearing the riff jammed out on an accordion may have been enough of a gag, he still creates some pretty clever lyrics, which is impressive considering the rather mundane subject matter of the song.

Getting into the stuff on his first album, "I Love Rocky Road" is interesting one.  Adding his accordion to the iconic guitar riff, to say nothing of "Musical Mike" Kieffer and his "magic" hands, the song still retains the fun of the original, with some extra scoops of ice cream on top.  "Buckingham Blues" is just pure blues rock, but feels a little awkward to listen to, now, given what all has since happened to Charles and Diane.  "Happy Birthday" is a very special brand of chaos.  There's something weirdly nihilistic about a song that's about how terrible everything is despite it being a birthday.  And yet, I listen to it every year for my own birthday, as I can't deny it's infectious energy and outright silliness.   Towards the end, we get a very peculiar version of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" that's a live recording from 1980, with just Weird Al on his instrument of choice and drummer Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz just pounding on Al's accordion case and making other weird noises.  Finally, there's "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead," an original track that isn't necessarily making fun of anything, but is instead an anthem to general weirdness and deliberately not fitting in with the crowd.  Honestly, it's all a lot of fun, and all these songs are still fun to sing along to, despite their age.

Not that has changed at all with his next album, Weird Al Yankovic in 3-D.  While the album benefited from being able to parody the King of Pop with "Eat it," also featuring an explosive guitar solo, the rest of the album does feature some solid rockers.  The original songs include a curious track about tabloid articles called "Midnight Star" which has some great vocal harmonies and arrangements.  This is followed by "That Boy Can Dance," a funny, piano-driven rocker that dwells on a useless dork who somehow can tear up the dancefloor.  The album then ends with "Nature Trail to Hell," lampooning the then popular slasher horror films.  While there hasn't been any claim of it being inspired by any particular artist, I've always felt there was a Toto vibe to the song, between all the screaming and horror samples.

Of there song parodies, there's a rather strange take on "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor and its association with the Rocky movies.  Here, Al sings about the Stallone character later in his career starting up a meat deli and providing recommendations for sandwich bread.  There's also the first of may polka medleys he would record over the years, this one featuring a number of classic rock songs, ranging from The Doors and The Beatles to Iron Butterfly, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, and Foreigner.

Weird Al's third album Dare to Be Stupid wouldn't have as much rock, but the ones we do have drift into more nerdy territory, with the original "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" being a massive reference to classic sci-fi films, and "Yoda" as his first Star-Wars-Based song, being a parody of "Lola" by the Kinks.  There's also the very peculiar "I Want a New Duck," riffing off of Huey Lewis's big hit about getting better medicinal drugs by changing the subject to one of a frustrating fowl as a pet.  Finally, there's another polka medley, this one feature the likes of ZZ Top, Yes, Twisted Sister, and Quiet Riot.  Overall, these tracks are as fun as the earlier rock tracks, with "Slime Creatures" in particular feeling like it must have been a blast to record.

However, trying to put out an album each year started to wear Al and his band down, so when his fourth album Polka Party! came out, the tracks sound rather weak and uninspired.  "One of Those Days" is an original tune that bounces back and forth between disasters and inconveniences in an amusing blasé manner while being a decent rock song, "Addicted to Spuds" is another food-based parody based on Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love," "Toothless People" is a rather mean-spirited parody of Mick Jagger's "Ruthless People," and the title track is another polka medley, this time featuring the likes of Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, INXS, The Rolling Stones, and Tears for Fears.  Despite all the punk rockers on the album's cover, this album really doesn't rock all that much.

Even Worse was a solid recovery, though.  Not only featuring another iconic Michael Jackson parody, but provides some decent rock songs.  "You Make Me," "Velvet Elvis," and "Twister" are all solid style parodies of Oingo Boingo, The Police, and The Beastie Boys, respectively.  As usual, Al and company do a great job at evoking all these different styles.  Of the covers, "Alimony" is an interesting, legal take on Billy Idol's cover of "Mony Mony," but the song that rocks the most is easily the original song "Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White," featuring a catchy little riff, and very strange lyrics about Al's dreams, drifting between various bizarre scenes.  Jim West really gets to flex his guitar playing on that one.

Well, I hope that was as fun for you as it was for me to go back over some of Al's rock-based parodies and songs.  As rock was pretty popular through the 80s, it's no surprise that he would take on a handful of rock songs as part of his humorous efforts.  I know the UHF Soundtrack is also an 80s album, but I didn't include it because I'm planning on doing this again next year, and grouping that one with the 90s albums splits things a little more evenly.