"Weird Al" Yankovic

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Dennis Fischer

Rock 'n' roll's top jester goes by the name "Weird Al" Yankovic. He specializes in creating amusing lyrics for popular rock tunes as well as writing humorous ditties in generic song styles. Yankovic has appeared on albums, starred in his own television show, and appeared in several films.

Yankovic was born Alfred Matthew Yankovic on October 23, 1959 in the Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood. He first took up the accordion when a salesman came around to solicit business for a music school. His parents, Nick and Mary Yankovic, decided on the accordion because of polka king Frankie Yankovic (no relation). As a child and young teen, Al watched a lot of TV, and TV provided the inspiration for much of his later work (most of his songs center around either food or television shows). He also became a fan of such musician/comedians as Allan Sherman (who also specialized in creating song parodies) and Spike Jones. Yankovic became acquainted with these musicians through the Dr. Demento radio show, which would later become a great source of publicity for his talents. In fact, Yankovic played his first song to be heard on the air, "Belvedere Cruising," on the Dr. Demento show in 1976.

After an extraordinary career at Lynwood High School, where he graduated as valedictorian, Yankovic attended the California Technical Institute in San Luis Obispo to study architecture, a field he chose because it was listed first in the catalogue. It was at California Polytechnical Institute that Yankovic had a radio show and earned the nickname "Weird Al." In 1979 Yankovic recorded his first real hit, a parody of the popular "My Sharona" by The Knack called "My Bologna." (The Knack liked the song so much they convinced their label to release the song as a single.) After the astounding success of that song, forever to be known as the "bathroom recording" as it was recorded in the acoustically perfect men's room, Al launched into a phenomenal career that has spanned 17 albums, movies, videos, and edible underwear.

Yankovic reached wide public attention in 1984 with his song "Eat It," a parody of Michael Jackson's popular hit "Beat It." Yankovic's video of the song amusingly parodied the visuals of the Jackson video, earning it a good deal of play on MTV. "Eat It" earned Yankovic his first Grammy Award, and the album, "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D, reached the top 15. On the album, Yankovic also recreated the set of the original Jeopardy TV series for his parody "I Lost on Jeopardy," which was based on a tune by the Greg Kihn Band.

Yankovic was tapped to provide songs for films, including "This Is the Life" for Johnny Dangerously (1984) and "Dare to Be Stupid" for Transformers: The Movie (1986). He starred in his own film, UHF (1989), as George Newman, head of a beleaguered, small-time cable station, as well as appearing in all three Naked Gun movies (1988, 1991, 1994), Tapeheads (1988), Nothing Sacred (1997), and Desperation Boulevard (1998). Yankovic was given his own Saturday morning TV show, The "Weird Al" Show, that ran during 1997-98 season and was compared to Pee-wee's Playhouse. In it, Al starred as himself opposite his best friend "Harvey the Wonder Hamster" (a daredevil hamster in his own habitrail), with a collection of friends and regulars (including Stan Freberg) who dropped by to discuss that week's moral problem. Also included in the show were a series of "Fatman" animated cartoons (for which Yankovic supplied the voice) based on the overweight character from the video "Fat" done up as a superhero.

His 1992 video "Smells Like Nirvana" pushed the pretentious original Nirvana video a step too far while lampooning the unintelligibility of its lyrics, and earned a place on Rolling Stone's top 100 videos of all-time. Nirvana members commented that they knew they had made it when Yankovic parodied their song. Yankovic's videos are some of the best in the business and have been compiled on two collections, first the Compleat Al (1985), and updated as the Al Yankovic: The Videos (1996). Yankovic had his biggest success to date with his album Bad Hair Day (1996), which featured a parody of Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise" as "Amish Paradise." (Though Coolio granted permission for the video, he later condemned Al's version).

Yankovic has also tried his hand at directing, creating a parody of Maurice Binder's James Bond opening titles for the film Spy Hard (1996), with Yankovic singing "Theme from Spy Hard" while silhouettes of overweight women swim by. Yankovic's stage shows are often described as some of the funniest and most entertaining around. At the end of the century, Yankovic reigned as the king of musical parody, a singular phenomenon in American musical history.