Oh, Weird Al.  My favorite musician for 30+ years.

The only reason I’m not a member of the Close Personal Friends of Al is that Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz sent my check for $14 back a year later to say that “Polka Party” had flopped and they were kind of thinking that Weird Al Yankovic was over, so the fan club was no more.

I probably should have reapplied at some point.

Sometime back, listening to Weird Al albums became a different kind of experience.  Instead of loving the parodies of pop tunes I recognized in the 1980s and 1990s, now I was having to research who the recording artists are and what their original songs sound like.  (To be fair, when I was 12, I’d no idea what “Yoda” was based on, either.)

What makes it worse, is that Weird Al is now a far superior singer/musician in comparison to most of the people that he is parodying these days.  You notice that his original songs are musically challenging and whimsically inventive, but then every other track on his album has to be a monotonous redo (with better lyrics) of an over-autotuned piece of repetitive junk.

I am loving his new album so far. His first video, Tacky, has a good song, but the video mainly benefits from the superstar guest appearances with goofy dances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsWo8apgLys

The second video is a huge improvement, with fun animation and lots of inside jokes .

Did ya catch that the homework is graded by Mrs. Krabapple? (Oh, and the song is a huge improvement over “Blurred Lines”)

Then “Foil”, a great song based on a horrible song.

You gotta love the heel turn that the video suddenly makes!