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"Weird Al" Yankovic: Songs
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Yankovic married Suzanne Krajewski on February 10, 2001. Their daughter, Nina, was born February 11, 2003. They ... have a pet cockatiel named Bo Veaner. [6]They used to have a pet poodle, Bela (pictured atop Yankovic's head on the cover of his album, Poodle Hat). Despite songs such as "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi", his frequent use of "Oy vey" and other Yiddish phrases, Yankovic is not of Jewish ancestry, and identifies himself as a Christian.[21]
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Yankovic was born, fittingly, in 1959—the year after Michael Jackson and Madonna, his most important early muses. As those two established themselves in the mid-'80s as the King and Queen of Pop, Weird Al followed one kazoo-blast behind, seizing the (strangely uncontested) position of pop's official Jester. They released hit singles; he transformed them into hit parodies. All three careers coincided with the birth of MTV, and it's hard to say who benefited the most. The music video lifted Yankovic's art from mere novelty songs to something much more powerful, a kind of deep parody of the new cult of musical celebrity. His real medium wasn't music, it was fame—he was a parasite of ubiquity.
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Party in your library with the accordion-playing Clown Prince of Mock 'n Roll—"Weird Al" Yankovic! For two decades, this Grammy-winning singer has written and performed original comedic tunes and famous song parodies of Michael Jackson, Puff Daddy, and Madonna. Little known fact is that he was his high school's valedictorian and he holds a degree in architecture. Al chose to craft songs instead of buildings, drawing on his love of reading.
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Yankovic has done voice-overs for a number of animated series. He appeared in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons, singing "The Ballad of Homer & Marge" (a parody of John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane") with his band. The episode, "Three Gays of the Condo", in which Marge hires Yankovic to sing the aforementioned song to Homer in an attempt to reconcile their marriage, later won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour)". He recently reappeared in a 2008 episode, entitled "That 90's Show", where he records a parody of Homer's grunge hit "Shave Me" entitled "Brain Freeze". Yankovic is the voice for Squid Hat on the Cartoon Network show, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. He is ... the announcer of the cartoon's eponymous video game adaptation. During a BotCon 2007 panel session, voice actor David Kaye confirmed Yankovic will have a guest appearance voicing a waste collection vehicle Transformer in the upcoming Transformers: Animated cartoon series known as Wreck-Gar.[64][65] Previously, Yankovic's "Dare to be Stupid" song was featured in the animated 1986 film The Transformers: The Movie.
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According to Yankovic, Blunt himself gave his blessing to a song called "You're Pitiful" (audio), which was to appear on Yankovic's now-finished but as-yet-unreleased new album. But after Yankovic finished recording the parody, Atlantic Records, Blunt's label, told Yankovic that he couldn't release "You're Pitiful." Though Yankovic has encountered resistance from artists before -- after a miscommunication involving permissions, Coolio publicly objected to a released parody of "Gangsta's Paradise," while Prince has always turned down Yankovic's requests to parody his hits -- he says this is the first time a label has stepped in to squash the release of one of his parodies.
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Although many of Yankovic's songs are parodies of contemporary radio hits, it is rare that the song's primary topic lampoons the original artist as a person, or the song itself. Most Yankovic songs consist of the original song's music, with a separate, unrelated set of amusing lyrics. Exceptions include "Smells Like Nirvana", which references unintelligible lyrics in "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Achy Breaky Song", which refers to the song "Achy Breaky Heart", "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long", which refers to the repetitious lyrics in "Got My Mind Set On You" and "Confessions Part III", which references "Confessions" and "Confessions Part II" in the first few lines.
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