#49 "Weird Al" Yankovic

#49 "Weird Al" Yankovic

Best Song: I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead



Now Weird Al gets a lot of grief. At least he used to until everyone thought that “White and Nerdy” was the best thing since slice bread and for the first time in his over 20 years of recording he had a top 10 hit. But either way his earlier work is still very niche and under exposed. Now Al has always done the parody stick and has always done a good job but with that it is easy to keep following the same tropes and cliches. (great example is the song “Grapefruit Diet” which is where he put all the fat jokes that weren’t good enough for “Fat”)

Which is why his debut is also his best and my personal favorite of his. Some of his later albums have betters songs but this is the most consistent from beginning to end. The parodies don’t ever feel like they were forced and chosen only because that song is popular now. The sense of humor is also much dryer then latter releases. “Ricky” (a parody on Mickey by Toni Basil) is simply about ‘I Love Lucy’ and includes the talented Tress MacNeille. “I Love Rocky Road” is a treat because out of all the parodies it is the one that represents what is to come.

But of all the parodies the best are “My Bolgna’ and “Another One Rides The Bus”. My Sharona and Another One Bites The Dust respectively, both really strip Weird Al to his core basics: accordion, nerdy vocals, and juvenile noises that are used to humorous effect.

But where this album really shines is the original material. While on later albums the originals would be style parodies these are not attempting to mock a style. Happy Birthday is a very chipper driving force as Al tells you to enjoy your birthday before the world goes to shit…kind of morbid but it really makes me chuckle. The closer Mr Frump In The Iron Lung is a delightful shuffle about a man stuck in an Iron Lung that the character of the song treats as a good friend and conversationalist.

But the best is I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead. Now this song would not be out of place on a Frank Zappa record mocking the hippies. Well it is less complex then Zappa but that makes it easier to enjoy. While there are some funny images the song is actually a pretty serious denouncement of hippie/yuppie life style. I actually think this is a great song that doesn’t deserve the obscurity it gets simply because it is done by a “novelty act”