“Weird Al” Yankovic has been living up to his name since the 1983 release of his self-titled debut, which set off a career that made chart history with his wacky and eccentric parodies. (That self-titled debut featured classics like “My Bologna,” based on “My Sharona,” and “Another One Rides the Bus,” based on “Another One Bites the Dust.”)
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Just over three decades after bursting on the scene as a parody recording artist, Weird Al made chart history with a 2014 release that poked fun at Imagine Dragons, Pharrell Williams, Lorde, and other early aught stars.
But as impressive as that accolade might be, Yankovic has expressed his disbelief that the current state of the music industry will allow something like that to ever happen again.
Weird Al Makes Chart History With Final Album in 2014
“Weird Al” Yankovic fulfilled his obligations of a 32-year contract with RCA Records with the release of his 14th and final studio album, Mandatory Fun, in July 2014. In true Yankovic fashion, all twelve songs were either parodies of specific pop hits or parodies in the style of artists like Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Pixies, and Foo Fighters.
Specific parody tracks included “Handy,” based on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.” “Foil” was Yankovic’s spin on Lorde’s hit song, “Royals.” The comedy artist took Robin Thicke’s controversial song, “Blurred Lines,” and turned it into “Word Crimes.” He switched Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” into “Tacky” and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” into “Inactive.”
Upon its release, Yankovic made personal and comedy history when Mandatory Fun hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200. The album was Yankovic’s first time topping the charts and the first time a comedy album ever debuted at the No. 1 spot. His feat was all the more impressive when one considered that the last time a comedy album had ever climbed to No. 1 was five decades earlier in 1963.
Finally, Yankovic joined the ranks of musical icons like Michael Jackson and Madonna after “Word Crimes” made him the third artist to have a Top 40 song in each decade since the 1980s. Not bad for a guy who built his career cracking zany jokes about popular music.
An Impressive Feat That’s Nearly Impossible Now
When news broke that “Weird Al” Yankovic’s 2014 album, Mandatory Fun, would be his last record with RCA Records, many assumed he was retiring from music forever. But the parody artist clarified that instead of releasing full albums, he intended to switch to digital singles and EPs that will help him produce content more quickly. And as he explained in an interview with Billboard, speed is essential in today’s ever-changing and incredibly vast music industry.
Yankovic half-joked that he “longed for the days of the monoculture where everybody was aware of what was big on the charts. And now, things have gotten very fragmented. Everybody’s into their own specific sub-genre, and they’re listening to just exactly that little niche kind of music that they’re into, which is good, in a way, I guess.”
“It’s nice when people have choices,” he continued. “But for a parody artist like me, it’s nice for everybody to be familiar with the same material so that I don’t have to figure out, like, ‘Well, what is a hit anymore?’ Certainly, there are big hits, and there are superstars and all that but it’s not as overwhelming as it was, say, in the ‘80s.”
Parody artists falling by the wayside as monoculture continues to dissipate is one of the lesser-considered consequences of the rapidly changing music industry. But at least Yankovic was able to release his last album (at the time of this writing, anyway) on an incredibly high note.
Photo by Santiago Felipe/Getty Images
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