At the beginning of the year, I made a list of the songs I would choose were I trying to elucidate the merits and considerable talent of "Weird Al" Yankovic. My love of the man knows no bounds, but even he has made some clunkers. Generally, these fall into general categories that I'll get to below. It's important to note that four of my five selections come from the late-'90s and beyond and one of them was just before I entered my teen years. My theory is that the I hadn't been over-exposed to the music prior to that time yet, so I'm not so pained by the memory of it. It's definitely not to say that I think "Weird Al" isn't as good as he used to be because he's also recording some of his best stuff on these newer albums. If anything, I think his older albums fall more in the middle ground and his newer work plays on extremes of good and bad. Something else of interest, these are all straightforward parodies. I think he's at his best doing pastiches or originals.
Regardless, nothing the man can do will ever make me love him less. Onward!
Achy Breaky Song
This song suffers from a fairly common phenomenon in "Weird Al's" work which is that a very bad song is very popular and almost necessitates that he parody it. Al (I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I called him that, for brevity's sake) does the only thing he can with the parody and makes it an assault on the original, but the song is simply too terrible and, unlike with many of his parodies, I can't look past the original to see the parody even though I agree with pretty much every sentiment expressed. I'm just constantly thinking about the Achy Breaky Song he's complaining about. It's simply a case where the irony succumbs to the awful (he borders on this again with the Lady Gaga parody, "Perform This Way").
Canadian Idiot
Again, it's pretty bad song to begin with, but that's not the main issue with Canadian Idiot. I hate even saying this, but it's just lazy. Picking on Canada (even satirically) is like picking on New Jersey. At his best, "Weird Al" brings something surprising to common tropes or offers a bizarre, silly perspective. Here, it's just a million things we've heard before compiled into a song.
Pretty Fly for a Rabbi
I substituted this for Grapefruit Diet because I really dug the "Go Fatty!" line in GD. Plus, the chorus of this is incredibly irritating. Al's voice can be somewhat taxing for those not used to it and he really pushes the boundaries doing this Offspring parody. And again, it's well-trod territory set to a fairly crappy song. It's a recipe for disaster.
The Saga Begins
I feel a little bad putting this on hear because a friend chose it as a duet at karaoke one time. That was fun, but the song still isn't great. Look... "Weird Al" struck gold with "Yoda." The song does a great job of laying out the plot and satirizing Star Wars. But Al gets in a rut with these types of songs. "Ode to a Superhero" has the same problems. Many of them he records before the movies are released, so their just major plot points without having much in the way of cultural references. It's just not that interesting to listen to a plot recap, even in song form.
Trash Day
"Weird Al" usually nails rap parodies, but this one just bombs. The chorus is completely forced. "Rotten here" is just terrible. "A little bit of ick ick." Trash Day also goes nowhere. It's a problem of other songs where they amount to nothing more than a list of things, but this is slightly different. The song just riffs on the fact that there's a lot of trash in the house and that it needs to be cleaned, but "Weird Al" is much more imaginative when he gets expansive. Sure, he mentions that it's been weeks of buildup and probably will be weeks more, but he doesn't make us feel it. The song reeks of writing a song around a poorly conceived concept. "Hot 'n' here, hmm? Rotten here! Nailed it."
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