{"id":75303,"date":"2014-08-13T14:05:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T18:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=75303"},"modified":"2014-08-14T12:54:19","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T16:54:19","slug":"his-own-wavelength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/13\/his-own-wavelength\/","title":{"rendered":"His Own Wavelength"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talking to Weird Al about his process.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"qfh9UxQiHiXBJ1vnseUr9A4FCd\"<\/a>

From the promotional poster for UHF<\/i>, Al\u2019s 1989 film.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s not that there wasn\u2019t a self-referential pop culture before \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic; it\u2019s just that those of us under forty might have a hard time remembering it. Just as difficult to imagine are those who, even after all these years\u2014after all the albums and songs and verses, after all the puns and parodies and poetry\u2014still think of Weird Al as nobody more than that guy who rhymes about food over popular music. Weird Al engages the entire culture, in all its functions and facets, through his lyrics, his videos, his original musical-style parodies. Just how he does it all remains a mystery no matter how often he explains it.<\/p>\n

When he explained it to me recently, by Skype, he said much that I\u2019d never heard before, even though, like most culture vultures my age, I\u2019ve followed his career since the early eighties. And if a lot of those early songs did in fact find their rhymes in the names of food, it\u2019s also true that a lot of them did not. His songs have become more intricate with each new album, even as they\u2019ve become more expansive. And more popular, too. It\u2019s easy to forget that Weird Al\u2019s career, after an early but tough start, nearly failed to make it very far out of the eighties. It wasn\u2019t until his parody of \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit\u201d (\u201cSmells Like Nirvana<\/a>\u201d) that he safely established full traction and momentum.<\/p>\n

That was 1992. Since then, his career has been an inverted, warped variation on the typical pop-music career, just as his songs have always been inverted, warped variations on typical pop music. In 2006, he released his first album ever to break the top ten (Straight Outta Lynwood<\/em>, featuring \u201cWhite & Nerdy<\/a>\u201d). And now, eight years after that, and thirty-five years after his very first single\u2014\u201cMy Bologna<\/a>,\u201d which, yeah, is about food\u2014his new album, Mandatory Fun<\/em>, has gone number one. It\u2019s not just the first time Weird Al\u2019s done it; it\u2019s the first time any comedian\u2019s done it since Allan Sherman, with My Son, the Nut<\/em> in 1963. <\/p>\n

Which makes a special kind of sense, because the song parodies of Allan Sherman did a lot to put Al on the road to where he is now. \u201cAllan Sherman is one of my all-time heroes,\u201d he said. \u201cI would say my Mount Rushmore of inspiration would be Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg, Spike Jones, and Tom Lehrer. Those are probably the four main people that influenced me and inspired me, and I was exposed to them through the Dr. Demento Show<\/em><\/a>,\u201d that ageless, perpetually hospitable home to musical satire.<\/p>\n

By the time he was out of high school\u2014he graduated at the age of sixteen as class valedictorian\u2014his homemade parodies were being played on Demento\u2019s radio show. While studying architecture at Cal Polytechnic, he worked at the campus radio station and continued contributing to Demento<\/em>. During his senior year, he took his accordion and some recording equipment into the bathroom across the hall from the radio station\u2014he really liked the acoustics in there\u2014and recorded \u201cMy Bologna.\u201d The Knack really dug it, finding it a suitable parody of \u201cMy Sharona,\u201d and, more consequently, the song earned Al his first recording contract. After that, he hooked up with his manager, Jay Levey, who\u2019s with him still, and\u2014with the exception of John \u201cBermuda\u201d Schwartz, whom he\u2019d already been working with\u2014all but one member of the band he\u2019s with today.<\/p>\n

The only formal training Al\u2019s had in music\u2014in anything except architecture, really\u2014are three years of accordion lessons his parents encouraged him to undergo as a kid. All of the aptitude he exhibits now\u2014not just for writing, but for vocals, for musical composition, for video direction, even for dancing and physical comedy\u2014has pretty much been acquired on the job. \u201cI do things I\u2019m not qualified to do,\u201d he said, \u201cand I keep doing them until I get good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He still plays the accordion, of course, in a fresh polka medley of popular songs to appear on each new album. Many consider these polka medleys the black jelly beans in Weird Al\u2019s bag, and even though I agree with them, I\u2019m still happy they\u2019re there. They\u2019re part of what gives him his identity and authenticity\u2014his indefinable integrity. They\u2019re part of what makes him iconic and unique.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle-cassidy-weird-al-yankovic\"<\/a>

Al in 2013. Photo: Kyle Cassidy, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Just because he makes it look easy doesn\u2019t mean it is. You listen to a song like his Beach Boys pastiche, \u201cMy Pancreas<\/a>,\u201d and just know<\/em> Al isn\u2019t bringing all that biological\/anatomical expertise straight to the writing desk. \u201cI knew a little bit about how the pancreas worked,\u201d he said, \u201cbut not enough that I could write an entire song about it. So I went online and I did a lot of research about the pancreas. Back in the eighties, in pre-Internet days, I would go to the local public library and I\u2019d check out books and I\u2019d look at reference material and I would xerox things off the library photocopier. I would learn as much as I could, like I was doing a senior project on something, before I even started writing the lyrics, because I wanted to present the best possible version of my subject matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of my songs are carefully written,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re crafted. It\u2019s not like I freestyle with lyrics that I spit off the top off my head. Everything is done with a lot of care and precision. If they need to be outlined, if the lyrics need a lot of research, or analytical observation, I put in the time.\u201d He elaborated further:<\/p>\n

\n

Usually when I write a song, and I\u2019ve come up with a concept for it, I\u2019ll generate pages and pages and pages of ideas, jokes, and gags based on the song, just random words and phrases that have anything to do with the concept \u2026 as much material as I possibly can. And then later I\u2019ll go through that and I\u2019ll pick out what I think the best ideas are. And if there\u2019s a joke I really want to make, I\u2019ll go, Okay, if I want to use this line, then what can I rhyme that with? \u2026 It\u2019s a very long and drawn-out analytical process. But that\u2019s why I\u2019m able to craft something that I think takes advantage of all the options that I have.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A lot of time is freed up in the efficiency of his methodology, no wasted motion in his machinery. Much of his editing happens \u201cin the conceptual stage,\u201d he said. \u201cI generate a million ideas, and then I boil them down to my twelve favorite ideas for songs, and then will pour all my energy into those ideas and write those twelve songs as best as I can. And all twelve make the album. There are no B cuts, there\u2019s nothing in the vault; it\u2019s all exactly what I set out to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the more wonderful things about observing Weird Al\u2019s career is that there\u2019s no typical Weird Al song. He seems intent on working in every musical mode and style, indulging every comedic and linguistic impulse. He might do a pastiche of Bob Dylan, comprised entirely of palindromic nonsense, calling it \u201cBob<\/a>\u201d\u2014which is, expert linguists will notice, itself a palindrome. Or he might tell hyperbolically grandiose tales about Charles Nelson Reilly in the style of the Truth About Chuck Norris<\/em> book (although Al made sure to inform me that the Chuck Norris jokes weren\u2019t his only inspiration for \u201cCNR<\/a>\u201d: \u201cIt\u2019s a comic trope that\u2019s been around a long time, and that\u2019s just something I thought would be fun\u201d). Or he might, as he does on Mandatory Fun <\/em>in what\u2019s become the album\u2019s most popular video, \u201cWord Crimes<\/a>,\u201d completely repurpose a popular, controversial song (\u201cBlurred Lines\u201d) as a grammar tutorial. (It should be mentioned that, although I don\u2019t have the heart to mention it myself, in every interview Weird Al has given, including this one, he\u2019s consistently committed a rather egregious and aggravating word crime of his own, using the pronoun that<\/em> instead of who<\/em> even when the object is another human being\u2014as in, \u201cI enjoy sometimes being around people that are high, because it\u2019s easy to make them laugh.\u201d) Or he might even pop up performing on somebody else\u2019s signature franchise\u2014The Simpsons<\/em>, say, or, as he did most recently, Epic Rap Battles of History<\/em>. (When I express genuine surprise that he let the show\u2019s creators write his lyrics for that one\u2014he played Isaac Newton battling Bill Nye the Science Guy and Neil deGrasse Tyson\u2014he says, \u201cIf it sucked<\/em>, I would have rewritten it. But it was great.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The first time he ever did a cameo was The Naked Gun<\/em> (1988). Al was single then, and he took a series of first dates to the movie, not telling any of them he was in the film. When he\u2019d show up on screen emerging from that airplane, \u201cthey just flipped out<\/em>,\u201d he told me, especially when they realized he was wearing that exact same Hawaiian shirt, in two totally different realms yet at exactly the same time.<\/p>\n

Lary Wallace<\/a> is an eccentric at large and the features editor of <\/em>Bangkok Post: The Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talking to Weird Al about his process. It\u2019s not that there wasn\u2019t a self-referential pop culture before \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic; it\u2019s just that those of us under forty might have a hard time remembering it. Just as difficult to imagine are those who, even after all these years\u2014after all the albums and songs and verses, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[1132,13106,14953,7480,7479,14881,14671],"class_list":["post-75303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-interviews","tag-lyrics","tag-mandatory-fun","tag-parody","tag-satire","tag-songwriting","tag-weird-al"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Does Weird Al Write His Songs?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lary Wallace talks to \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic about his new album, \u201cMandatory Fun,\u201d his writing process, and taking first dates to the film \u201cThe Naked Gun.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/13\/his-own-wavelength\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"His Own Wavelength by Lary Wallace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 13, 2014 \u2013 Talking to Weird Al about his process. 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