First up, the parodies for which he is most famous. ("Smells Like Nirvana," "Beverly Hillbillies," and "Word Crimes" have previously been featured.)
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This was my introduction to Weird Al's music. As a kid, I was a fan of his short-lived TV show and so I received his second album In 3-D as a birthday gift. Before letting me listen to it, my father played me Michael Jackson's "Beat It" without telling me why. I thought it was cool, but I didn't understand what was happening. Then he put in the Weird Al album and my mind was opened. It remains my favorite parody of his for nostaliga reasons (and also due to the great video).
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Before the breakout success of "Eat It," Weird Al was just a humble novelty accordion act. His first recorded parody was of the Knack's "My Sharona." A lot of Weird Al's early parodies featured food in some way. Eventually he'd grow out of it, but in the early days, it was just silly nonsense.
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Thanks to this being my first album ever, I was completely unaware of many of the songs being parodied. So it was always fun to go through life and suddenly hear a song on the radio and everything click. In addition to "Eat It," I was always fond of this "King of Pain" Police parody. Mostly, I liked the little character study that Al quickly establishes about this man who mournfully pleads to have customers come into his rinky-dink clothing store. "There's a sale on our double-knit slacks today. It's the same old sale as yesterday." Poetry.
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For his Dare to Be Stupid album, Al was having a lot of trouble churning out parodies as fast as his producers wanted him to. So while he had to settle with lame songs like "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch" or "I Want a New Duck," he was able to pull out this old song that he had tried to put on his previous albums. A parody of the Kinks' "Lola," it's clear that Al was in his element when he wasn't forced to just rip off whatever song was a recent hit on the radio at the time. And, with Star Wars VII finally in production, this song actually predicted Mark Hamill's future accurately!
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After the poor sales of his next album Polka Party, Al was able to take a break and comeback with a strong follow up. Of the parodies, I feel that "Fat" was just a bland retread of "Eat It," and so my favorite comes from his Tiffany parody of "I Think We're Alone Now." I'm just a big fan of the line, "Without a mother or a father, just a test tube and a womb with a view."
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Okay, it's another cheap food parody. But it's of my favorite R.E.M. song so let's just enjoy it.
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While "Eat It" gave Al's career a kickstart, "Smells Like Nirvana" gave it a magnificent boost and kept him going through the 1990s. Shortly afterwards, Al was able to take the world's worst song, "Macarthur Park" and replace the lyrics with a synopsis of the hit movie of the year. Not only does it work perfectly, but Al actually managed to salvage the original song and make it worthy of historical record. The parody works on it's own, which shows some great skill.
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So I lied. This was actually my first introduction to Weird Al. Except I didn't realize it at the time. I remember my family watching this music video when it debuted and I had no idea what was actually going on. It's a strange concept parodying an already strange song/video to begin with. Taking the Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" and replacing the tragic stories with current events may have instantly dated the song (causing it to be one of his few non-album released parodies), but it also allowed Al to bring it back in concert with updated lyrics reflecting the stories of the day. The original music makes it so much fun to make your own stories to.
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I really wanted to put "Gump" on this list, but I know that this "Gangsta's Paradise" parody is a crowd favorite. In fact, it is the only Weird Al song that I have ever heard played on the radio in regular rotation. That's pretty significant.
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I can give or take "The Saga Begins"/"American Pie" parody, but this Yiddish-infused "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" parody is incredible. Not only was it a great song to play at all the bar mitzvahs I went to during this time period, but it also managed to slip a joke by me that I didn't get until 15 years later: "The parents pay the mohel and he gets to keep the tip!"
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It was a toss up between this and the Avril Lavigne parody "A Complicated Song." And while I love me some Lavigne, Al's at his best when he picks an older song to fit his creative mood. Taking the Billy Joel classic, "Piano Man," Al follows the natural comedic path towards, "Sling us a web, you're the Spider-Man" and takes it from there. Plus, this song captures the superior Sam Raimi movie version of the character. And heck, just listening to it again made me realize how genius this man is.
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Weird Al has always been the king of the nerds, but he finally owns up to it in this parody of "Ridin' Dirty." I don't know what's more impressive. The amount of references he fits into this song or his amazing rapping skills.
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Al's 13th album seemed to take forever to come out. Five years was a long time to wait. But he was waiting for inspiration to strike and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" provided the best opportunity. Like "Smells Like Nirvana," Al took the opportunity to poke fun at the artist themselves in this parody. I particularly appreciate the "Express Yourself" shout out in the middle of the song. Lady Gaga of course loved the song (despite some initial legal snafus due to miscommunication).
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