Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email


2015 January 23 • Friday

"Weird Al" Yankovic's most recent record, Mandatory Fun, reached number one last year. Sometimes nice guys finish first!

(And according to Wikipedia, “Weird Al”, Michael Jackson and Madonna are the only three artists to have a top 40 hit in every decade since the 1980s.)

It first came to my attention when a friend played me "Foil", a parody of Lourde's "Royals". I liked it but it was in the background and it wasn't until several months later that I watched the music video and paid attention to the song.

It turns out to be genius. And so is almost every song on this record.

"Now That's What I Call Polka" is not only a return to Al's roots but an ingenious twist on his usual approach. He keeps the lyrics to a number of hit songs but sets them to his own Spike Jones and His City Slickers-inspired arrangement.

"Sports Song" is a thrilling and Zappa-esque mockery of cheerleading and pep rallies and, by extension, nationalism and propaganda.

"First World Problems" makes fun of the whining of the rich and selfish. It's great but Yankovic's most valuable service is to take a huge pop hit and give it new lyrics that make it very silly. By doing so he highlights how self-aggrandizing, self-important and pretentious the original was.

This is why "Tacky", the parody of "Happy", is just as good as the original and not much of a transformation. The original song was fun, not boastful or po-faced. The best thing about both songs is the music, not the lyrics.

"Weird Al" rescues the hooks and grooves of "Fancy" by turning them into the backing track of "Handy", an ad for a contractor/handyman service. “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons is hilariously reworked as “Inactive”, a song about being very, very enervated. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” becomes “Word Crimes”, an amusing song about common uses of improper English grammar, syntax, spelling etc. (Apparently the split infinitive in one line was used intentionally to see if we would notice.)

“My Own Eyes” is a funny song about things the singer wishes he hadn’t seen. The music reminded me of Foo Fighters. It’s the least awesome number on the CD, though I enjoy the music part of it more than the music part of “Sports Song”.

“Lame Claim to Fame” is another original and a really great one, basically a very clever riff on name-dropping. Art Garfunkel and Kevin Bacon get me every time. (“Tacky” also has a great bit about name-dropping. At least that’s what Kanye West keeps telling me.)

As far as I know, “Weird Al” Yanjovic is never mean. He lampoons, he mocks, he takes the wind out of sails, he crumbles huge monuments to huger egos but he always appears to have a sunny and gentle temperament. Mandatory Fun does have one genuine satire with a biting edge.

Yankovic rides the momentum of his own optimism to create “Mission Statement”, a song that rubs everybody’s face in how all the energy that baby boomers once put into the dreams and ideals associated with the 1960s, has found a new home in the corporate boardroom. They went from Woodstock to stock brokers. The song, with its backward guitar solo and CSN&Y-style vocal arrangement, is devastating. It’s another one whose video should really be seen as well.

Before “Weird Al” there was Tom Lehrer, whose similarly absurd and dangerous spirit is in sympathy with the last number, a massive, nine-minute pop opus called “Jackson Park Express”. The story is simple. The singer sees a woman get on the bus and he fantasizes that they have a connection and imagines that they are communicating non-verbally with each other. In moments she goes from complete stranger to mother of their children, in his mind. The lyrics are sometimes silly, sometimes violently unsettling. At one point you might wonder if the singer is Ed Gein.

“Weird Al” Yankovic is my hero.