Walk of Fame: 23 of Weird Al's greatest songs

Weird Al started sending his tapes to "The Dr. Demento Show" as a teenager. Dr. Demento was the king of novelty music, a man who could make or break weird parody acts, like an eccentric Simon Cowell. The first Weird Al hit on the program was  “My Bologna,” a parody of The Knack’s “My Sharona” that Al recorded in a bathroom at Cal Poly. The Knack enjoyed it so much, they had Capitol Records release it as a single.

This Queen parody was recorded live on Dr. Demento’s show, and it was luckily captured on tape and in stereo, because it became the most requested song by his listeners right away. This one is historically significant because it marked the first appearance of Al’s longtime percussionist Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz, who kept the beat on an accordion case. Later he went on to join the band and design WeirdAl.com.

Food was an early theme for Al’s parodies – and also a later theme, to the point where he released a compilation called The Food Album. Weird Al eats healthy in his regular life, eventually becoming a vegan, so perhaps these songs also serve as wish fulfillment. Some people have rock n’ roll fantasies; Weird Al uses his music to live out his dream of being an ice cream junkie. From what we can tell, original artist Joan Jett also enjoys ice cream. (But she likes vanilla.)

Weird Al parodied Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey” with this ode to “I Love Lucy” and played Desi Arnaz in the video. It’s one of the few times in the first few decades of his career that Weird Al appeared without a mustache! The parody is arguably more melodic and wistful than Basil’s original – when Lucy sings, “Oh Ricky, what a pity don’t you understand/That every day’s a rerun and the laughter’s always canned,” you almost feel a pang. But then the TV theme music kicks in and Al starts guffawing, and the moment passes.

A 1984 Michael Jackson parody won Al his first Grammy and actually outperformed “Beat It” on the charts in Australia. It was boosted by the video, a shot-for-shot remake of the original that even featured some of the original dancers. Of course, some of them are too large to fight, and the climactic battle is fought over a rubber chicken – but if you don’t like it, you can’t send it back!

In general, Weird Al doesn’t accept parody pitches from anyone, including his fans. An exception happens when the person making the suggestion is Madonna. She was openly speculating about when Weird Al would turn “Like A Virgin” into “Like A Surgeon.” A friend of Al’s manager overheard it, and soon Al was cuttin’ for the first time.

Four years later, Michael Jackson had a new album called “Bad,” whose lead single was called “Bad,” so Weird Al had a new album called “Even Worse,” whose lead single was called “Fat.” Not only did he do another video parody, but Michael Jackson even let him use the replica of the subway set he’d used for Moonwalker. There’s a crew of overweight backup dancers, including one guy who wasn’t actually a professional – he just delivered pizza to the office and got cast on the spot. The beauty of the song is that Weird Al is basically doing “Yo momma’s so fat” jokes, but he's directing them at his own character in the song:

“When I walk out to get my mail/It measures on the Richter scale/Down at the beach I'm a lucky man/I'm the only one who gets a tan.”

Not all of Weird Al’s songs are direct parodies. A lot of them simply evoke the sound and style of another artist – like his Devo riff, “Dare To Be Stupid.” Weird Al dresses in full Whip It-era Devo gear for live performances. The songs lyrics are absurd, reversed proverbs and highly amusing, though we take issue with the idea that befriending mashed potatoes is somehow stupid. It’s also just a good catchy song, showing off Al’s legitimate musical chops.

This is another Yankovic original, done in the style of doo-wop. Al cheerfully lists all the painful and disgusting things he’d do to avoid spending “one more minute.” Eventually it builds to a frantic emotional climax about ripping out his heart and stomping on it, followed by a long pause and then a “...darlin.'” There’s more graphic violence in this song – “dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades,” “rip out my intestines with a fork” – than a good 75 percent of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. You could make a horrifying “Saw” sequel based on just this four minutes and two seconds, and maybe someone already has!

Most musicians Al reaches out to before a song parody give permission – and in fact, they often help. For this awkwardly titled song, recorded for a dream sequence in Al’s feature film "UHF," Dire Straits not only gave their blessing, but Mark Knopfler recorded the lead guitar part himself – perhaps the first time a listener heard Weird Al and thought, “Wow, this really shreds.”

Despite its cult popularity, "UHF" bombed at the box office, and as a result, the soundtrack struggled to. Al’s comeback started with “Smells Like Nirvana,” a parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which dealt with Nirvana’s incomprehensible lyrics – and not, as Kurt Cobain expected, about food. The video got nominated for an MTV award, and the song charted all the way at No. 35 – perhaps because consumers could finally understand the words to the melody they’d already embraced.

Nearly all of Weird Al’s albums contain a polka – a medley of popular songs arranged and recorded for accordion, clarinet, banjo and tuba, and filed with sound effects. Weird Al has referred to these polka medleys as playing the songs “the way God intended.” All of the polkas are worth a listen, but there’s something magical about the way “Polka Your Eyes Out” lurches from Bell Biv Devoe’s “Do Me” to “Enter Sandman” and then into “The Humpty Dance.” Yes, it’s weird, but so were the early ‘90s.

This twisted Al original is almost a bookend to “One More Minute,” as a sappy boyfriend muses about his girlfriend falling out of love with him. Why does he think this? Well, she’s made it with a whole hockey team, she burned down his house, she’s been poisoning his coffee every day and left a cobra in his underwear drawer. All that adds up to give him a “funny feeling” she doesn’t love him anymore.

“Gangsta’s Paradise” was a monster hit in 1995, selling over a million copies. Six months later, Weird Al had “Amish Paradise,” a new album called “Bad Hair Day” and a new enemy in Coolio. You see, Al’s record company told him Coolio had granted permission for the parody, but Coolio himself was livid, thinking that it had “desecrated” his song. It probably didn’t help that Al had also parodied Coolio’s signature braids in the video, on his album cover and in public promotional appearances. Eventually Coolio made nice with Weird Al, admitting that he “was being too magnificent and too terrific about myself.” With that kind of humility, Coolio could even make it in an Amish community.

One rapper who embraced Weird Al’s take on his song was Chamillionaire, who even shared “White and Nerdy” on his own MySpace page before Al himself. (Look, it was 2006, MySpace was crucial back then.) The concept is funny enough, but what takes the song to another lever is weird Al’s surprisingly good rapping. He even pulls off the Krayzie Bone verse! A common theme in a lot of these songs is the unexpected proficiency in the performances and production. It takes a lot of musical smarts to make songs this dumb.

A holiday classic from the "Polka Party!” album, Al wrote this one after his label demanded he put out a holiday album. When they heard this song, a cheery Phil Spector-style production about surviving a nuclear holocaust, the label changed its mind. The song remains a favorite with fans, but after 9/11, the connotations attached to “Ground Zero” forever changed, and it disappeared from Al’s live playlist for good.

This Presidents of the United States of America parody is easily Weird Al’s shortest, clocking in at only 2 minutes and 10 seconds, even though it neatly summarizes “Forrest Gump,” which is almost two-and-a-half hours long. The Presidents enjoyed the song and were the first band where Al got to actually see their first reaction to the parody. In fact, they’ve been known to change the last line to Al’s version when they play live – “That’s all I have to say about that.”

“You’re Pitiful” is a parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," recorded for Al’s “Straight Out of Lynwood” album, about a pathetic middle-aged guy who lives with his mother. While Blunt gave his permission, his record company, Atlantic Records did not. Apparently they thought it was too early in Blunt’s career and would make him seem like a one-hit wonder, so they’d give permission when “the time was right.” Eleven years later, it’s still not quite the right time – maybe after Blunt puts out his sixth album?

Maybe Weird Al was repeating himself when he went to the "Star Wars" well, but so what? Weird Al fans have almost the same demographic as "Star Wars" fans, so he’s taking care of his base. And “Yoda” is a delight, a parody of the Kinks’ “Lola” that he wrote and recorded way back in 1980 but didn’t release it until he got permission five years later. The holdup wasn’t George Lucas; it was the Kinks’ publisher, who’d never even asked the song’s composer, Ray Davies. The re-recording also omitted the accordion from the original, which Al had thought was “a little much” on his early stuff.