"Weird Al" Yankovic: Difference between revisions

* [[Conspicuous CG]]: The video for "Perform This Way" features Weird Al's [[Digital Head Swap|head pasteddigitally superimposed]] overon a woman's body. The effect works for the most part, but it looks just ''[[Uncanny Valley Makeup|slightly]]'' off...

** And now for some [[Irony]]. [[YouTube]] seems to have blocked one person's upload of his music videos in the U.S. due to copyright concerns from Sony... said person is Weird Al himself.

** Al himself authorized his album ''Alpocalypse'' to be streamed over the internet a week before its release date.

* [[Fun with Palindromes]]: The lyrics of "Bob" (a style parodypastiche of [[Bob Dylan]]) are all palindromes -- as is, of course, its title.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: "Amish Paradise" contains the line "I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art"

** Another possible example in "I Remember Larry," after he talks about tying the titular prankerprankster's mouth with a rag and leaving him for dead:

** "Dog Eat Dog" parodies the Talking Heads, and even includes modified versions of lines from "Once in a Lifetime". Al even puts on a David Byrne-style giant suit when performing this song live.

** "Trigger Happy" is a take on the style of of ''every [[The Beach Boys|Beach Boys]] song ever.'' Except for the "Pet Songs"-era ones he later homaged with "Pancreas".

* [[Jumping the Shark]]: [[In-Universe|A line in "Couch Potato"]] says that ''[[King of Queens]]'' did this. In the first minute.

** But only because [[Richard Simmons|Richard]] [[Camp Gay|Simmons]] [[Very False Advertising|wasn't]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|in it]].

* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: Al has almost always been seen wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, black trousers, and brightly-patterned Vans shoes since the 1980s. Until Al had his vision corrected with LASIK eye surgery in the 1990s, his distinctive large wire-rimmed eyeglasses were also part of his trademark look, as was his "white-guy afro".

* [[List Song]]: Lots. "Hardware Store", "eBay", "Bob" ([[Moment of Awesome (Sugar Wiki)|a list of palindromes done in the style of Bob Dylan]]), "Virus Alert", "I'll Sue Ya..."

** Also "Good Old Days", a James Taylor-esque folk ballad about childhood. However, this particular childhood involved torturing rats with hacksaws, burning down a corner store and brutally beating the shop owner, and taking a girl from highschoolhigh school to a dance, and shaving her bald and abandoning her in the desert.

* [[Memetic Badass]]: [[In-Universe|In-song]] example -- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnapb-30hA Charles Nelson Reilly].

** Also heAl actually delayed hisan album (which would later be "Off the Deep End") just so he could do a parody of a song off MichealMichael's new album (Dangerous).. only for MichealMichael to offer Al any song but "Black or White" (WhichwWhich Al wanted to parody), because MichealMichael didn't want to lower the song's message.

** A perfect example is on the album "''Straight Outta Lynwood''," after his [[Rage Against the Machine]] parody "I'll Sue Ya." After an angry song like that one, there's an abrupt guitar chord, which is directly followed by a one-second pause going into "Polkarama," which has the [[Dance Craze]] "Chicken Dance" as an intro. Of course, THAT''that'' goes into a polka cover of "Let's Get it Started" by The Black-Eyed Peas.

*** A similar example is on the album "''Running With Scissors"'', where the [[Nine Inch Nails]] style parodypastiche "Germs" is followed by an intensely happy polka (the first track in the medley being the ''[[Spice Girls]]'', for crying out loud). [[Mood Whiplash]] at it'sits finest, folks.

* [[Mockumentary]]: Two, actually. There's the rare "The Compleat Al," made to help promote the ''Dare To Be Stupid'' album, and the Disney Channel combination [[Mockumentary]]/[[Rockumentary]] "''There's No Going Home"'', which was included as an [[Easter Egg]] on the ''Running With Scissors'' album.

* [[Nice Guy]]: Although fair-use law regarding parody mean Al doesn't ''need'' anyone's permission, he makes sure that he does have permission from an artist in order to poke fun. This has worked out for him in several ways, with the originalsoriginal artists often contributing resources to the final project to thank him for his politeness.

* [[Not Making This Up Disclaimer]]: In the booklet that came with ''Permanent Record'', Al notes that the song "Midnight Star" (about ridiculous tabloid headlines) contained mostly real headlines from various tabloids. He specifically noted that he held onto one about The Incredible Frog Boy from the ''[[Weekly World News]]'' for years.

* [[Once a Season|Once an Album]]: Almost every album<ref>"Weird Al Yankovic" and "Even Worse" are the odd ones out here</ref> contains onea polka medley of songs popular at the time <ref>The exceptions being "The Hot Rocks Polka", which is a medley of Rolling Stones' songs from a wider span of time, and "Bohemian Polka" is a double-speed full cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody"</ref>, and one song in any style ripping on TV shows popular at the time. There's also always at least one song about food.

** Heck, it's pretty much the only thinkthing anyone actually likes about that movie. It is the first film made by [[Seltzer and Friedberg]], after all.

** Ben Folds played piano on "Why Does This Always Happen To Me"... which is a parody of Ben Folds songs. "Genius in France", a style parody of [[Frank Zappa]], features Frank's son Dweezil on guitar.

** James Brown arranged for Al to record the music video for "Living With A Hernia" using the backdrop where he performed the"Living In songAmerica" in ''[[Rocky IV]]''.

** On Al's 2011 album ''Alpocalypse'', he did a style parody of [[Hanson]] called "If That Isn't Love." Al and the Hanson brothers are friends, and Taylor Hanson plays keyboards on the song.

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: In "Jerry Springer"; appropriately, Yankovic himself doesn't use the word, but guest vocalist Tress MacNeille does during a portion of the song parodying a typical episode of the show:

* [[Rap Rock]]: "All About The Pentiums", [[Parodied Trope|parodies]] a rock remix of a rap song called, "It's all about the Benjamins"

** [[Ear Worm|Since You Been Gone]], an acapella''a capella'' number done entirely by Al's numerous inflections.

* [[Shaggy Dog Story]]: "Albuquerque" is a long rambling rant all sorts of stuff but ultimately about how {{spoiler|he hates sauerkraut}}.

* [[Shoulders of Doom]]: When performing "Dog Eat Dog", a style parody of [[Talking Heads (band)|Talking Heads]], Al wears a suit with ''massive'' shoulderpadsshoulder pads as a spoof of David Byrne's [[Memetic Outfit]]. He also wears it briefly in the "UHF" video.

** "White and nerdyNerdy" also mentions ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''.

* [[Stealth Pun]]: "Polka Face" uses a section of [[Name's the Same|Frankie Yankovic's]] "Tick Tock Polka" as a bridge. The next song in the medley? [[Kesha|"Tik Tok"]].

** What about "Achy Breaky Song" and "Brady Bunch"? Both of them are about how he would rather watch or listen to ANYTHING''anything'' but those.

** Generally averted by Weird Al in his song "It's All About The Pentiums." Some of the jokes haven't aged well ([[YY2K|Millennium 2 KBug]], the trademark "Pentium" itself has moved from top-of-the-line CPUs to cheap bottom-shelf models, etc.), but the "Hundred Gigabytes of RAM" remains a decently large amount, and the "Flat Screen Monitor Forty Inches Wide" is still huge. However, it is oddly appropriate given that he talks about getting a top of the line model that was obsolete before he even opened the box.

*** The screen issue in the song is an [[Averted Trope]] because TV companies have the same problem with TV sets as monitor manufacturers have - ''there's only so big you can make them''. The ratio to human eyes and human perception remain the same. If the price for the bigger sets went down, they would have to introduce a room-size to be their top, money-making model, and living rooms are only so big. Getting back to Weird Al, he actually lampshades this in "Frank's 2000 inchInch TV". (A 2000 inch TV set would be 166 feet on the diagonal.)

Was do I like [[Star Trek: The Original Series|Kirk]] or do I like [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Picard]] ?}}

* [[Writer Revolt]]: ''Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch'', widely considered his worst song by a wide margin, and [[Springtime for Hitler|deliberately so]].