Pop-music parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic has released more than a dozen studio albums over nearly three decades, outliving many of the one-hit-wonder acts he satirizes. Perhaps that's because he's more ambitious than the typical flavor-of-the-month band: He's also had a feature film (1989's UHF) and a children's TV series (CBS' The Weird Al Show in 1997). Neither were commercial or critical successes, but Yankovic remains tenacious—he's currently pitching a new movie and a TV series. Yankovic recently spoke to The A.V. Club while on tour with his latest album, Straight Outta Lynwood.
The A.V. Club: What makes one song more challenging than another to parody?
"Weird Al" Yankovic: There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me. [Laughs.] It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
AVC: Is there one in particular you really wanted to work but couldn't?
WAY: I wouldn't say there's one in particular. If you look at the polka medleys I've released on my albums throughout the years, those are littered with songs that I thought might have been good parodies, and yet I thought "Maybe this time around, I'd just polkacize this." [Laughs.]
AVC: In a Random Rules last year, Nirvana popped up, and you expressed dissatisfaction with the state of pop music. Doesn't that in turn affect the quality of your music?
WAY: For the parodies, certainly, the source material is going to affect the final product, because it's going to sound amazingly like whatever I'm parodying. It's suffered in comparison, I guess. It's not that I think pop music today is so bad, but I guess I was such a fan of that era of music. I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out. A lot of the music today doesn't excite me the same way. It's just a personal thing.
AVC: Is it harder for you to find songs to parody if you aren't engaged with current popular music?
WAY: Well, no, not at all. My personal taste doesn't enter into it a lot when I make my decisions as to what to parody. The primary consideration is whether a song is popular. Whether it's a rap, rock, or zydeco song, if it's captured the zeitgeist, it's fair game. Having said that, I tend to pick songs that I actually enjoy, because I know that I have to be living with that song for a big chunk of my life if I decide to do it.
AVC: A lot of bands say they feel they've made it when you've parodied one of their songs. When did you feel you'd made it?
WAY: I'd probably have to say when I appeared on The Simpsons. That, to me, was reaching a pop-cultural plateau.
AVC: That was only a couple of years ago.
WAY: Yeah. And, in fact, they had me back and did a little recording session for the new season. So I'm one of the few celebrities that got to do a repeat performance on The Simpsons, which I'm very flattered by. Just to do a recording session sitting next to Dan Castellaneta, to do a scene with Homer Simpson, was a pretty high point in my life.
AVC: If you could redo one of your parodies, which would it be and why?
WAY: It'd probably be something off my first album, because my whole first album was recorded extremely quickly, and without a lot of attention to detail or production value. Basically, we didn't have any money, and we were doing it as quickly as we could. The perfectionist in me would like to just re-record that whole first album, although I don't have the George Lucas impulse to actually redo everything I've done in the past. [Laughs.] I like to let things exist in their historical perspective. People like "Another One Rides The Bus" the way that it is, with my drummer banging on the accordion case. I don't think they'd really want to hear it done with Pro Tools in a 98-track studio.
AVC: You were in a Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! sketch with Bob Odenkirk. Did you have words with him about his Daffy "Mal" Yinkleyankle parody of you from Mr. Show?
WAY: I e-mailed him a long time ago about that. [Laughs.] I was flattered, in a weird way. It was a pretty savage parody, but I thought it was very funny. He really kind of zeroed in on everything that's irritating about me. [Laughs.]
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