{"id":3602,"date":"2011-08-22T00:50:27","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T07:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3602"},"modified":"2011-08-22T00:50:27","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T07:50:27","slug":"%e2%80%9cweird-al%e2%80%9d-yankovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/%e2%80%9cweird-al%e2%80%9d-yankovic\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWEIRD AL\u201d YANKOVIC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

\u201cWEIRD AL\u201d YANKOVIC<\/h1>\n

Rock\u2019s favorite \u201cpop-culture Cuisinart\u201d is still mixing things up<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic is in St.\u00a0Charles, Mo.\u2014at least, he thinks so. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure I am,\u201d he reports by phone. \u201cThey took the bag off my head and here I was.\u201d He may prefer to open with a joke, but the man born Alfred Matthew Yankovic takes the craft of skewering the music world just as seriously today as he did when he first burst onto the scene in the early 1980s. Written off as a novelty act when he first shot to fame rendering Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cBeat It\u201d as \u201cEat It,\u201d the Lynwood, Calif., native\u2019s career as a pop parodist has proven far more durable than those of many of his targets.<\/p>\n

Yankovic has always sought an artist\u2019s permission before releasing a parody, and made news recently when he announced that Lady Gaga had denied him the right to issue his \u201cBorn This Way\u201d rewrite \u201cPerform This Way.\u201d The whole affair turned out to be a miscommunication, and now that track opens Yankovic\u2019s new Alpocalypse<\/em>. The album plays to all his satirical strengths: There are straightforward parodies of other recent hits (Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cYou Belong With Me\u201d becomes the paparazzi send-up \u201cTMZ\u201d); painstaking original pastiches of particular artists or genres (the Doors-esque \u201cCraigslist,\u201d featuring that band\u2019s keyboardist Ray Manzarek); gut-busting originals; and a medley of pop favorites (\u201cPolka Face\u201d) rendered in polka fashion by Yankovic, who has been rocking out on accordion since age 6. Having established that the musical funnyman was indeed backstage at the Family Arena in St. Charles for a concert later that evening and not the victim of a kidnapping attempt, we spoke with Yankovic, 51, about his reign as pop\u2019s top court jester.<\/p>\n

Is topicality part of your job? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. I\u2019ve referred to my brain as a pop-culture Cuisinart. I need to feed it constantly and always be aware of what\u2019s happening in the world, be aware of what\u2019s happening with music and TV and films\u2014which is something I do anyway, because I\u2019m a big fan of pop culture. But it\u2019s more important for me, because it\u2019s also what I do for a living. I have to be able to comment on things that are happening in the zeitgeist.<\/p>\n

How do you construct a parody? <\/strong><\/p>\n

When we do parodies we\u2019re trying to make them sound as close as possible to the original. That wasn\u2019t always the case\u2014when we started out we were just doing a rough approximation and would throw an accordion on the song whether there was one or not. (laughs<\/em>) But now part of the gag is to suck people into thinking that they\u2019re listening to the original song. Then all of a sudden it\u2019s, \u201cHey, these aren\u2019t the right lyrics, what\u2019s going on here?\u201d So we listen on headphones, dissect every track and try to make it sound as close as possible to the original master recording.<\/p>\n

How has that process changed? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to enumerate all of them, but one thing is that there\u2019s not a whole lot of conventional instruments in pop songs anymore. For instance, for the Lady Gaga thing we never set up a guitar amp; we never set up drums. Everybody in the band came into the studio with a DVD like, \u201cHere\u2019s the digital file, I recorded my part at home on the computer.\u201d That\u2019s the way pop music is going. It\u2019s all synthesized on a computer.<\/p>\n

How does that compare to creating a pastiche like \u201cCraigslist\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That takes a lot more time. Producing the parodies is relatively simple, because there are no real creative choices to be made\u2014we have the template. Doing a pastiche is also harder than writing a straight original song, because not only does it have to be an original composition, it has to have the soul of a whole different artist. So I listen to that artist\u2019s entire body of work. I make notes. I try to figure out what the idiosyncrasies are, what the subtle little things are that indicate this is that particular artist\u2019s composition. I try to incorporate all of those things while I\u2019m writing this original composition. I supply the band with a dozen or so examples of the artist\u2019s work that are representative of the style. I\u2019m giving them a demo of my original song, but I also want them to be thinking of that artist while they\u2019re adding their own personal touches to it. There\u2019s a whole lot more effort that goes into one of those kind of songs than something I made from scratch. It\u2019s a labor of love.<\/p>\n

How did you adapt to parodying rap? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t go to school or anything for it. (laughs<\/em>) I\u2019m pretty shameless, so I just gave it my best shot. I\u2019ve gotten a lot of good compliments. When I did \u201cWhite & Nerdy\u201d [2006], Chamillionaire himself [who performed the original, \u201cRidin\u2019\u201d] told me he thought I was a pretty good rapper, which is pretty high praise coming from him. I don\u2019t know what to attribute it to.<\/p>\n

You replicated his verbal flow throughout the song.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Attention to detail is a hallmark of what I do. I try to match every syllable if I can and make it as close as possible to the original. A large part of that is in the writing. It\u2019s important to have the same meter, the same cadence, the same inflection, to make it as close as possible. It\u2019s the little things that a lot of people perhaps wouldn\u2019t even notice on a surface level. But they can tell that a lot of effort has been put into it and that it\u2019s been carefully crafted to\u00a0emulate the source material.<\/p>\n

Is getting permission tough? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Whenever possible I try to contact an artist directly, but more often than not I don\u2019t have that person\u2019s home phone number. (laughs<\/em>) That\u2019s not always an option. It\u2019s usually a case of my manager talking to their manager. Truthfully, 99 percent of the time it works out just fine, the artist signs off on it and looks at it as a badge of honor. But every now and then somebody will stand in the way and block access to the artist. That\u2019s just something that I\u2019ve had to deal with. It\u2019s unfortunate, but thankfully in the Lady Gaga case it all got resolved very happily.<\/p>\n

How do you go about putting together a polka medley? <\/strong><\/p>\n

In terms of song selection, I look at pop songs that I think would sound humorous done polka-style. A lot of the songs I use in polka medleys are actually songs that I would have done parodies of had I been able to figure out a clever enough idea. (laughs<\/em>) It\u2019s like the graveyard of parodies. Once we\u2019ve gotten permission to use the songs, I\u2019ll sit with my accordion and play around with them. I\u2019ll try to figure out what song would segue naturally into another song, or maybe would be a jarring juxtaposition with another song. I piece it all together, arrange it, write up the horn parts and produce a demo.<\/p>\n

What are your goals now? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve achieved pretty much every goal I ever had. I would love to be able to continue doing what I do, because I love this gig. I still love performing live, I still love recording songs. I\u2019d like to keep doing it bigger and better.<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWEIRD AL\u201d YANKOVIC Rock\u2019s favorite \u201cpop-culture Cuisinart\u201d is still mixing things up \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic is in St.\u00a0Charles, Mo.\u2014at least, he thinks so. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure I am,\u201d he reports by phone. \u201cThey took the bag off my head and here I was.\u201d He may prefer to open with a joke, but the man born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1636,970,2479],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3604,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions\/3604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}