"Do You Have Any Bear Claws?" Ranking Weird Al's Albums, Worst to Best - Part 1 (14-8)

What can be said about Weird Al at this point? He's a truly unique figure in pop culture: a "novelty" act where the novelty never wore off. Once just a lanky, accordion-loving teen submitting songs to his idol Dr. Demento, Al quickly graduated into a household name in the 80s through a series of iconic parodies and their arguably even more iconic music videos. Most people, perhaps fairly, assumed the polka parody guy would be a quick fad. But he's miraculously managed to stick around for over 40 damn years now, an insane feat for someone primarily known for making fun of pop music. Even just this year, when he released his first song in a decade - a polka medley of all the big hits in his time off - it made headlines. People still just love them some Al. 

Now, if you clicked on this article, you know Al is much more than just a guy who turns pop songs into food puns. Yes, that is a part of his charm (and, yes, if he were to come out tomorrow with a Sabrina Carpenter parody entitled "Peas, Peas, Peas", fans would likely rejoice), but it's not the whole story. I was on a podcast recently talking about the appeal of the comedy team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ), a group Al has cited as a major influence on his own work. Now, in the case of both Al and ZAZ, there is a deceptive level of craft going on to sell their humor, but that's still not where the ultimate appeal lies. Really what gives both of those groups their juice is just how inviting their humor is. If it's nasty, it's gleefully nasty. It it's rude, it's more cheeky than ribald. If it's mean, it's only in the way that a playful noogie is. It's speaking to your inner 12 year old in the best way. 

I've always been an appreciator of Al's work, while not necessarily taking the full deep dive. I obviously enjoyed his big parodies, and knew that beyond that what intrigued me even more from his work were his "style parody" songs, where he attempts to make a track that's a pastiche or soundalike of a particular artist or genre. I feel like that's where that the Al die hards will you the real juice is. 

Which, lets talk about those "Al die hards" for a second. I feel like there's a lot of people out there that would pause hearing that there are "Weird Al" Yankovic "die hards", but there absolutely are. There are people know every sound effect and vocal inflection on these tracks the way Grateful Dead fans memorize certain riffs. Toddintheshadows, one of my favorite online reviewers/personalities (I feel like adding "online" to anyone's descriptor now feels like an indictment, but I promise in this case it isn't), once admitted he doesn't get excited for any new release from an artist except for Weird Al. That type of dedication has always fascinated me and is what really inspired me to officially take the deep dive and do this list. Over the summer I've listened to each of these albums several times, trying to fully soak in the Al oeuvre. Doing so only deepened that appreciation all the more.

So, in that spirit, let's celebrate the man by taking a look at his whole catalogue, ranked from what works the least for me to what works the best.

Note: While I attempt to talk about every song in Al's album catalogue here, I won't be talking about his Polka medleys. It's not that I don't enjoy them, with them usually coming about halfway through the album to serve as both a energy boost and a fun time capsule of the hits of that moment. But they don't tend to lead to much discussion, and despite a couple of them taking on themes there isn't a ton to distinguish them aside from just listing which batch of recent hits Al includes in that medley. So, again, nothing against them, but I'm just choosing to ignore those. 

14. UHF - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff (1989)

I will say I wouldn't do this ranking if it meant having to outright crap on an Al record, since he's such a force for positivity that it just feels like bad karma to dump on his misses. Luckily, they're few and far between, as I don't think Al really has an out-and-out bad album. Still, it's worth seeing what things worked more than others, and these first couple albums I'll be talking about do find Al at odd points in his career. As this article will go over, while Al's career has had an incredible longevity, it's certainly not a story without its peaks and valleys. His film UHF, which had it's 25th anniversary this year, is one of those films that flopped on release and then almost instantly became a cult favorite. It would be irrational to blame the initial cold reception of the film on its soundtrack, but I imagine this tape certainly didn't help boost ticket sales. Outside of the fun title track - which we'll get to - there's just not much for a general audience to grab onto here. It's just a bit of a mixed bag, not without its highlights but lacking the overall cohesion to give it much staying power. 

The Parodies: Not Al's greatest batch of parodies this time around. "Money for Nothing / Beverly Hillbillies*" (a title insisted on by copyright lawyers, down to the asterisk) does exactly what it says on the tin, with Al performing the lyrics to the Hillbillies theme over the beat for Dire Straits' 1985 hit "Money For Nothing". It's a cute idea, and Al certainly pulled out all the stops for it, recruiting Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler & Guy Fletcher to help recreate their own instrumental, but it can't but feel a bit like an immaculately produced version of an idea a stoned frat bro cooked up. 

Similarly feeling below Al's intelligence level is "Isle Thing", his parody of Tone Loc's "Wild Thing", which flips the track to be about a Gilligan's Island obsessed fling of Al's. Not only is Al's Tone Loc impression more aggravating than accurate, the angle of the parody itself just feels far more forced than necessary. For one, do people refer to Gilligan's Island as Gilligan's Isle? And even if they do, has anyone in human history ever referred to watching the show as "doing the Gilligan's Isle thing?" 

Similarly undercooked is "Spam" (and you don't want that with pork), Al's parody of R.E.M.'s "Stand". Now admittedly part of my distaste for this one just comes from not caring for the original song, despite generally being a huge R.E.M. fan. But also, and this will be maybe my hottest take in this whole article, I don't love a lot of the food songs in Weird Al's catalogue. I think he nailed the angle of taking a popular song and making it about food on his first two albums, and ever since then his return to that well has often felt a bit, well, like leftovers. I wonder if Al even feels this a bit as well, as after the release of the 1993 compilation The Food Album (which was also around the time he called up Kurt Cobain to ask for permission to parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and Cobain's first question was if it would be about food) he seemed to slow down on the food parodies in his work. To give this one some credit though, "Spam" does at least get some mileage out of the mysterious nature of its titular food's contents: "If there's some left, don't throw it out / Use it for spackle or bathroom grout."

"She Drives Like Crazy", a parody of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", has a fun concept, about Al's beau who scares the bejeezus out of him with her reckless driving, but outside of "even hitchhikers just say no", he doesn't really flesh the idea out to much of a comedic place in the writing. Still, points to Al and his band for how skillfully they recreate the original's irresistibly bubbly production. Unfortunately, Al's attempts to match Roland Gift's falsetto are, uh, not as impressive. 

The Originals: Again, I wouldn't do this ranking if I thought there were Al records I could just purely trash on. So while none of the parodies really worked for me here, I can say that what does largely work are the originals. As I mentioned above, the title track "UHF" is a ton of fun, and definitely the highlight of the record. It's just pure 80's excess in the best ways, busting out synths, crunchy guitar solos and gospel back up singers. One of the more infectiously fun songs in Al's catalogue. 

Speaking of fun 80s excess, "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters From a Planet Nears Mars" is an entry in a sub-genre of Al songs throughout the decade, where he creates a theme for his own fake B-movie. I'll talk about the best of those later, but they're always a fun excuse for Al to pull out all the bells and whistles and deliver a big, dumb showstopper. Which of course means we get a saxophone solo here, something I will always eat up, no matter how cheesy. And this one is niice and cheesy.

"Generic Blues" feels in search of a unifying concept. The joke ping pongs between the lead character singing the blues about trivial situations ("I wish I could get me some money / But I forgot my automated teller code") to exaggerated ("I was born in a paper sack in the bottom of a sewer") to nonsensical ("My brothers and sisters all hated me because I was an only child".) It's not like all the lines I just quoted aren't funny, so the song mostly works, but I feel like if it stuck to just one of those concepts as the main joke, as least for a couple verses, it would stick the landing more. 

"Let Me Be Your Hog" is about 16 seconds long. That brevity is part of the joke, but that does place in the sort of odds and section of the album. That also includes "Gandhi II" and "Spatula City", two audio clips from the film itself that play alright within the very sketch like nature of UHF the film, but feel a bit longing for context when placed in the middle of an album. The instrumental "Fun Zone" plays best of this collection, but having them all on the album just lends to it feeling less cohesive than Al's better works. 

"The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" closes out the album with an epic near 7 minute long folksy tale of a family taking a trek to the titular tourist spot. If the joke of "Let Me Be Your Hog" is in it's brevity, a lot of the humor here is in just how much Al lets everything breathe for his epic tale about some mundane shlocky bit of Americana. He'd return to the well of making a song intentionally long later to greater success, but this certainly isn't a bad track, especially as an album closer. (“My eyes got moist, but I said with a smile, ‘Kids, this here’s what America’s all about.’ / And I fell on my knees and I cried and cried, and that’s when those security guards threw us out.”)

13. Polka Party! (1986)

Al's lowest charting album, selling even less than his pre-"Eat It" debut. As Al later told his mentor Dr Demento, "I thought it was the end of my career. I figured I'd peaked with 'Eat It' and 'Like A Surgeon' and now people were slowly forgetting about me and I was well on my way to obscurity." This is the album even a lot of Weird Al die hards don't like, since it almost stopped his career dead in its tracks. Looking back on it now, it's mostly disposable, but not without some essential cuts. It was a toss up between this and the UHF soundtrack for the bottom spot, but the choice original tracks and the slightly more cohesive nature of this one just barely gave it the edge. 

The Parodies: "Living With a Hernia", Al's take on James Brown's "Living In America", is actually a pretty fun riff on a pretty fun tune, but as a lead single it was never going to match the success of "Like a Surgeon" or "Eat It". For one, while the original Brown song is certainly well liked, its not a universally known, era defining single like those previous two sources of parody. The idea as well, while funny (especially in how it contrasts the pain of the main character with Brown's famous "owww!"s), just isn't as clean or, ironically, as easily digestible as something like "Eat It". 

Similarly non-destined for success was the "Addicted to Love" parody "Addicted to Spuds". Why? Well, for one thing, you just heard the whole joke. It's about a guy who can't stop eating potatoes. Iunno. 

The Ed McMahon themed "Here's Johnny", a parody of El DeBarge's "Who's Johnny" (a song title annoyingly lacking a question mark), perhaps misses me due to a difference of generation more than anything: I was born after Johnny Carson's run as Tonight Show host ended. So I'm not exactly the person most primed for an Ed McMahon parody. On the other hand, I do find Phil Hartman's Ed McMahon impression from the time hilarious, so perhaps this one ends missing me more due to, well, it just not being very good. 

"Toothless People" is actually one of the few Al parodies that a decent amount of people might have assumed to be an original. That's because the point of parody, Mick Jagger's "Ruthless People", the theme from the film of the same name, was decidedly not a hit. That's not how Al thought things would go, however, and so he sought approval from Jagger himself to parody the track. The song came out and bricked, but Al thought it would be disrespect to gain approval from someone of Mick's stature to parody his song and then not end up releasing said parody. Unfortunately the actual song we ended up getting was just about disrespectful, with Al donning the voice of a bullfrog with lung cancer to imitate Jagger and delivering one of his lamer song concepts in the process. It's another song where the title is the whole joke, 'what if you were so old you didn't have no teeth no more?' It could only possibly work if the song reveled in the mean spirited nature of the set up, but instead its lyrics are far too cutesy ("The tooth fairy won't come no more.")

The Originals: Once again, it's the originals that do the majority of the work to raise my estimation of the album. One of the few songs on the album that can be called a fan favorite is"Dog Eat Dog", a Talking Heads pastiche about a mindless office drone ("This is not my beautiful stapler"). Not only does it fit perfectly within the Talking Heads oeuvre, it's a damn fine song in it's own right. One of Al's best pure pop compositions. 

The other song you could call a fan favorite off Polka Party! is "Christmas at Ground Zero". Legend has it, Al's label had been getting on him to deliver them a Christmas song for years. He finally relented, giving them a Phil Spector pastiche that's probably a tad more apocalyptic than they were hoping for (though, given the Phil Spector influence, it could have gone even darker...). It's a song that sadly went out of fashion during Christmas season for a while, due to "ground zero" having, uh, a slightly different and more specific meaning for general audiences at some point after, oh, 2001 or so. Still, it's an incredibly cheerful tune about impending nuclear doom ("If the radiation level is okay / I'll go out with you and see all the new mutations on New Year's Day"). 

More underrated, but also a winner (if not quite on the level of those last two) is "One of Those Days", an original song about a guy who just can't catch a break ("A 747 crashed into my den / And there's nothing but tater tots for dinner again"). It's a song that highlights just how solid Al's band is, as the instrumentation is a lot of fun, especially the killer piano playing that accompanies the track.

"Don't Wear Those Shoes" is another original where the band is crushing, though the song doesn't quite get there comedically. The concept of a man who'll accept any humiliation or degradation from their partner as long as they don't wear this one pair of shoes the man hates is funny in its specificity, but I think the song then needs to match that specificity in turn with the genre it parodies. If Al took that concept and applied to a Motown style song where he really nailed the aesthetic (something in general I'd like to see him do), it could work. Whereas here, attached to a more generic sort of 80's pop rock sound, the specificity of the joke just leaves it sounding confused. 

The weakest of the originals is the country parody "Good Enough For Now", though even that one still qualifies as 'good enough'. It's a slightly unassuming, but still somewhat charming track, balancing its pretty, twangy instrumental with Al's backhanded lyrics ("Oh I couldn't live a single day without you / Actually, on second thought, I suppose I could"). 

12. Alapalooza (1993)

As will sometimes happen on Al records, it took him a while to find a lead single he was satisfied with for his album prior to this one, 1992's Off the Deep End. It took him so long to come up with that lead parody, in fact, that by the time he came to it and was able to complete that album, he had already written all the originals songs he intended to use for this album. So while there is a bit of a delineation in what was written when and for what, I think that proximity does ultimately lead to this record feeling a bit like leftovers. That's not necessarily the worst thing, and as we'll get into there are certainly highlights here, but I can see why this one's largely seen as inessential with the Al canon, and as easily his weakest 90's release. 

The Parodies: Lead single "Jurassic Park", a take on Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park", is probably the least of the tracks where Al tells the story of a modern blockbuster over the tune of a classic rock track (it's hard to beat those Star Wars ones), but it's still a good deal of fun. The Barney reference is maybe a bit eye-worthy worthy now, but I see how it seemed like a slam dunk in 1993. (Also check out the Japanese language version Al recorded for those markets) 

"Bedrock Anthem", in which Al parodies both Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" for the intro and their song "Give It Away" for the majority of the track, feels a bit in search of an idea. Or at least, a better one than "do you guys remember The Flintstones?" Flipping the "Give It Away" chorus to "yabba dabba do" almost hits on something with how gibberish-y the Pepps lyrics can be, but mostly it's just Flintstones references. Which, to be fair, if Flintstones references do it for you, this is definitely your track. 

My favorite of this album's parodies is "Achy Breaky Song", one of the few times where Al gets delightfully mean towards his choice of parody subject. The whole song is essentially Al saying the bar he's at can play any crappy song they want, but just please don't play Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart". Minor points deducted though for how casually Al throws out the Bee Gees along with acts like New Kids on the Block or Vanilla Ice.

Not quite as successful is "Livin' in the Fridge", a parody of Aerosmith's "Livin' on the Edge" about things that stay in your fridge so long they start to take on a life of their own. I love the idea here, and like "Spam" only wish we leaned even further into the horrific properties the food can take on. According to Al, he needed one more parody track to put the record out (even with the addition of "Fridge", the album only has 4 parodies, on the lower end for his albums), and had feelers out to several different artists to obtain their permission, and Aerosmith were the first to respond. I feel like you can feel the last minute nature in which the track was put together; the lyrics just needed another pass or two. 

The Originals: As I mentioned earlier, I'm a pretty big R.E.M. fan, so of course the highlight of this record to me is the pastiche of the earlier work, "Frank's 2000" TV". What can I say, I'm a sucker for even an imitation of Mike Mill's heavenly harmonies. Sure, the observation at hand, "boy, aren't those plasma screen TVs getting out of hand?", might be a somewhat slight and dated concept to build a song around, but the lyrics have fun with the absurdity of the oversized television ("Now I can watch The Simpsons from thirty blocks away").

Another charmer is the Prince parody "Traffic Jam", which is actually a better Prince song than a lot of the actual Prince songs of the 90s (now to be fair, this one does borrow kind of heavily from "Let's Go Crazy"). This is another one where Al's band actually gets to go off a bit, and the ensuing instrumental is a ton of fun. It is perhaps disappointing Al doesn't really attempt any sorta of Prince style vocal flourishes in his performance, though given how his attempts at imitating a falsetto went in "She Drives Like Crazy", that might be for the best. 

Also fairly successful is "Talk Soup", commissioned to be the theme of the E! show of the same name but ultimately unused (WTF, guys?). The song, in which Al plays a man obsessed with going on trashy daytime TV shows, is not the most timeless track - and it's hurt by being shown up by another day time TV send up that comes later in Al's catalogue - but it gets points for the way the song expertly imitates that era of big over-produced 80's hits, a la Peter Gabriel. One of the catchier songs on the album.

Not quite as successful is the AC/DC parody "Young, Dumb & Ugly". It does actually sound like an AC/DC song in a way, but like, one that released that year. In 1993. For the Hard Target soundtrack. Though maybe part of the problem is the surprisingly thin production, which really doesn't supply the track with the bite it needs. Speaking of, the concept for this is cute, with it being a "look how tough and badass we are" song clearly being sung by a total dweeb ("We only leave a 10% tip / Sometimes we don't return our shopping carts"). However there isn't much in the way of heightening to the idea, so it does feel a bit one-note by the end of the track. 

We return to the Aerosmith sound with a somewhat limp rocker, "She Never Told Me She a Mime". Like any decent human, I can relate to the shock and horror Al would feel upon learning his beloved partner is a damn dirty street mime (I hope they get trapped in an invisible box in hell!), but it's another song where the production lets it down. It's not a bad track, but it feels a bit too bland to land on the album, let alone sustain it's oversized length for a comedy track (just under 5 minutes).

We also return to the Peter Gabriel well (if you can't tell, one of this record's problems is it could use a bit more variety) with probably the weakest original song here, "Waffle King". Which isn't to say it's a total miss of a track, but it does suffer from the fact that we just had a more enjoyable song in this sound just a few tracks before this one in the track list. It's also a rather limp concept - yet another food song - this time about a guy who can make really good waffles. It does gain some juice when the track shifts and becomes about the fame going to the Waffle King's head ("I wanna see you grovel, you waffle-eating fools"), though it could lean even further into that aspect of things. This was originally intended for his prior album Off the Deep End, and it's not hard for me to see why it was originally cut. 

Also on the album is "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", a 21 second track from one of Al's Al TV specials. 'Tis cute. 

11. Alpocalypse (2011)

Much like I mentioned above with 1992's Off the Deep End, this is a record where the original songs had been long completed before the final record came out, as Al struggled to find a song worthy enough to parody with his lead single. That meant this record saw a rather tortured release process, in which an EP containing almost half of the album's songs was released two whole years prior to when the full album finally came out. Unfortunately, its not really an album worth all that hype, which is a shame because it certainly isn't bad. It's a slightly low-key release that sees Al in pure "give the fans what they want" mode; not necessarily challenging himself but for the most part he seems to be having fun with everything he's doing here, and, as is often the case with his work, that sense of fun translates. It's the weakest entry of Al's surprisingly incredibly strong 21st Century, but that's more due to a lack of a major highlights rather than it being littered with lowlights. This album still represents a slightly higher tier within the catalogue than the last three we just covered.

The Parodies: Speaking of tortured releases, even once Al finally did settle on a parody of Lady Gaga's "Born  This Way" entitled "Perform This Way" as the lead single, the record suffered further delays as her management team initially denied him rights to parody the song. Luckily, Gaga herself heard about this and intervened, granting Al permission. So after all of that, I do hate saying there really isn't much to this one besides the video, but that really is the highlight here to me. I don't know, making fun of Gaga's over the top outfits and saying the original song sounded a lot like "Express Yourself" (and that she was pulling a lot from Madonna in general) is stuff everyone was doing in 2011. For what's worth, I sense I'm in the minority here and that this remains a well liked single among Al fans.

Either way it works better than the initial first single released from the album (Al released the track, devoid of any attachment to an album, in 2008, as part of him experimenting with release distribution): a parody of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" that riffs on the recession for a true "ballin' on a budget" anthem. It's not bad, but it's a rather unassuming riff on a rather unassuming song. One of the signs of a great Weird Al parody is when you hear the original song it's mocking, your brain fills in the parody lyrics over the regular ones. On that note, it really doesn't speak well for a Weird Al song when, if I hear this original T.I. song in public (not something that happens a ton these days, but still), and it gets to the "I want your body, need your body" part of the pre-chorus; it's not Al's "you want Top Ramen, need Top Ramen" line that pops in my head, but rather "I want Joe Biden, need Joe Biden" from some YouTuber's Obama themed parody from the time. In no situation should Weird Al be losing for space in my brain over "Alphacat". 

"TMZ" sees Al parodying Taylor Swift, back when she made songs that still approximated country music (turns around and notices house on fire due to mildest of Swift digs). It's a fairly fun track, mocking the vulture-like nature of paparazzi sites, though not without casting those stones back at the stars themselves ("It's getting to the point where a famous person can't / Even get a DUI or go on a racist rant"). I do think this one could have even more venom for how it treats the paps, but it's a decent track, and it features some uncredited VO work from Tom Kenny, which is just easy automatic points from me.

Although "Perform This Way" was the lead single, I feel like over time the Miley Cyrus parody "Party In the C.I.A." has ended up this album's most remembered track (it has about 5 times the Spotify streams of "Perform", for one thing). I can see why this would be the album's fan favorite, as it is the most successful of the parody material on the album. It gets some serious mileage out of the contrast of the cheery tone of the original instrumental and the pitch black nature of the new lyrics about shadowy conspiracies and underground torture ("I got my handcuffs, my cyanide pill, my classified dossier!") 

"Another Tattoo", a parody of B.o.B.'s "Nothin' on You", on the other hand, is probably the parody track here that works the least. Again, part of that is just down to me not loving the original song (I really enjoyed a couple of those early B.o.B. singles and then he proceeded to sell out about as hard as anyone this side of the Black Eyed Peas. That's also all of course before he went on a big flat-Earther kick). Beyond that though, a song about a tattoo obsessive could lend to some fun details, but it only does so here for about a verse before the song just kind of sputters and runs out of steam. Nothing awful, but it does feel like a bit of a miss.

The Originals: The originals here are pretty much all fun, if lacking in a major highlights. The White Stripes homage "CNR" is a hoot in how it imitates the group's trademark in-your-face production style, but it's not exactly one of Al's most novel song concepts. It's a tribute to Broadway legend and Match Game staple Charles Nelson Reilly, and the lyrics are just Chuck Norris Facts. There's no real twist to it, he's just doing that thing we all did for a second there in the 00s. Which, I can't blame him, it was a fun thing to do. And we do get some good, silly details here ("Everyday he'd make the host of Match Game give him a piggyback ride....giddy up Gene!") Still, it just feels a little more "been there, done that" than you'd hope for.

"Skipper Dan", on the other hand, finds a more novel premise to wrap itself around, focusing on the exploits of a bitter once-promising actor who can now only get work as the tour guide on Disney's Jungle Cruise ride. The song is a Weezer riff, and much like with Prince earlier, Al delivers a much better Weezer song here than Rivers Cuomo and co have often been able to in this century (thinks of Raditude and Pacific Daydream and shudders). The catchiest and most purely enjoyable of the album's originals. 

Another successful style parody is the Doors homage "Craigslist", in which Al adopts a Jim Morrison voice to read through ads from the titular website. As is often the case with Al songs, it's certainly affixed to its moment in time (boys did the late aughts to early 10's love a Craigslist joke), but its brought to some fun places, particularly the final verse in which a man is trying to sell the styrofoam packing peanuts that come in moving boxes. It's a damn fine soundalike too, with Al going as far as to get Doors co-founder Ray Manzarek to give the song its distinctly Doorsian keyboard work. It does let itself breathe perhaps a tad too much, but it's definitely an enjoyable pastiche.

"Ringtone" hits a similar note to "Craigslist" of nailing the musical parody side of things, in this case Queen, while wrapping itself around a semi dated-to-the-late-aughts concept. Having this, "Craigslist" & "TMZ" all share space on the album does place things a little too firmly in 2009-2011 (in fact, this is one of the songs originally released in 2009, and I do wonder if personalized ringtones were even much of a thing at all still by 2011. I feel like they mostly gone by then.)  It doesn't do a ton for me on the comedy front, but again, it does at least nail the Queen aesthetic. 

It speaks to Al's stature at this point in his career that "Craigslist" isn't even the only song on the album to feature a member from the band he's parodying, as his take on Hanson, "If That Isn't Love", features Taylor Hanson on piano. It's a catchy track, as Hanson parodies are wont to be. It does feel a little derivative for Al, with our narrator singing passionately about the mediocre relationship he shares with the song's subject. Not a bad a jumping point, but just feels like something we've seen from Al before. To that point, it's immediately followed on the album by "Whatever You Like", which feels like an even worse take on the same theme. 

We close the album with the Meat Loaf & Jim Steinman homage "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me". Sure, it's yet another song that screams "written in 2009", but the glorious cheese of Meat Loaf's work with Steinman is close enough to parody anyway that it lends itself naturally to comedy. And while this isn't the most cohesive album at times, this does actually work really well as a closer.                   

10. Even Worse (1988)

After the disappointment of Polka Party!, Al took a break from recording for several months before crafting Even Worse, his first attempt at a comeback record. And what a comeback it was, going platinum and becoming Al's best selling album up to that point. It's a mostly successful affair, even if it often feels like Al not quite hitting his full potential. Not to call this record undercooked, but it just feels ironically lacking in real "oomph" for an album who's most famous song is about a fellow with very heavy steps. Still, that song, as well as most of the record largely, is successful enough that I get why this record was able to get Al back in people's good graces. 

The Parodies: "Fat", the album's lead parody, was the hit that propelled Al back into mainstream success, and remains a fan favorite to this day. I understand why, especially after seeing the great clips of Al doing the song in full costume on stage, even if it's never necessarily been my favorite of his big parodies. The video is at least fantastic (Al got permission from Michael Jackson to reuse the subway set from his original "Bad" video) and deservedly one of Al's most iconic. The fat jokes range from clever (substituting Jackson's "shamon" ad lib for "ham on whole wheat" is brilliant) to cliche ("more chins than Chinatown"). Still, it was a boost for Al's career at a time he severely needed one, so for that we salute.

We also get what is, along with "Achy Breaky Song", probably the meanest Al ever got towards the song he's parodying with his take on George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You", "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long". It's a tricky proposition to mock something for being repetitive without falling to the same trap yourself, and it's not quite a challenge I think the song ends up living up to. 

The Tiffany parody "I Think I'm a Clone Now" has a more expansive idea, though it quickly devolves into a vehicle for puns ("We go out walking close together / I guess you could say I'm really beside myself"). It's cute, but I feel like we really could have pushed this one to even more deranged sci-fi heights. 

As usual, I appreciate Al's virtuosic accordion playing on "Lasagna", a parody of "La Bamba", though unfortunately this is another fan favorite that doesn't do a ton for me. The lyrics were originally written in Italian before a last minute switch to English, which perhaps explains their lack of sophistication. It just feels a bit late in Al's career to have a song so thoroughly stay in first gear. 

"Alimony", a parody of Billy Idol's "Mony Mony" (weirdly continuing this album's trend of parodying 80's covers of older rock songs), is probably the least essential parody here, though it definitely has some competition in "Six Words". Once again the problem is just that the track doesn't really meaningful escalate within the lyrics. By the end of the first line you understand it's a track about a guy who's bitter about having to pay alimony checks, and we never really evolve past that or meaningfully shade it in. We don't learn about the relationship, maybe hear some silly stories about the ex wife being especially vindictive, we just...hear about how this guy hates paying alimony. I suppose that lack of expansion means we avoid the song showcasing any potentially ugly attitudes towards women, but it does also just leave the track lacking a larger point. 

The Originals: "Stuck In a Closet With Vanna White" finds Al doing a decent impression of a cock-rock beat to describe his nonsensical dreams. It's an idea that allows for some memorably odd visual gags ("Suddenly I'm bowling on the Starship Enterprise"), but it's needs a stronger concept to sustain its five minute runtime than "here are some weird dreams I had".

More concise, and in general just a lot more fun, is the Oingo Boingo parody "You Make Me". It's an incredibly bouncy, infectious song. Plus it has some timeless romantic lines, like "you make me wanna hide a weasel in my shorts". (Blushes) for me??

The highlight of the record, though, is "Melanie", featuring one of the most killer melodies Al ever crafted. Speaking of killer, this one's a real red flag anthem, basically going "what if the meaning of 'Every Breath You Take' was made blindingly obvious?" So we have a beautifully arranged song about a pyscho stalker ("And to think I probably never would have found her If I hadn't bought that telescope"). It really builds in its escalation too, culminating in an ending darker than I'd have previously thought Al would go to (the song in general is deliciously dark). 

Speaking of The Police (finally, a natural transition) they get probably the weakest of the originals with the style parody "Velvet Elvis", about a man obsessed with a kitschy painting of Elvis he found at a swap meet. I think this could have been something if we really buckled down on his obsession, but maybe that risks the character feeling too similar to the one in "Melanie". As is though, it's hard to find humor here unless you find those Elvis paintings so tacky that the mere idea of skewering them in a song busts you up. 

This record is also notable for containing Al's first ever hip-hop track, the Beastie Boys pastiche "Twister", about the board game of the same name. It's certainly fun hearing Al attempt his impression of 80's Ad-Rock, but there really isn't a ton separating this from an actual Twister commercial at the time. Except the commercial would be about half as long as this, which, even though this only stands at a minute, would probably play to its benefit. 

Luckily we close out strong with the James Taylor parody "Good Old Days", about a sociopath waxing nostalgia about his young days of torturin' 'round the neighborhood. The track nails the warms vibes it needs to in the instrumental for the blunt turn of the lyrics ("I'd spend all day long in the basement / Torturing rats with a hacksaw and pulling the wings off of flies") to really pay off. 

9. Off the Deep End (1992)

As I've mentioned throughout the article, after UHF was a bit of flop, Al wanted to wait until he was sure he had a killer lead single before putting out his next album, meaning most of the originals for this one were done and in-the-bag over a year before they had an idea on what the single would be. Luckily, Nirvana came along with an era-defining hit, which is always a helpful thing for a parody artist. Though it is funny, and shows just how drastically Nirvana altered the pop scene of the early 90s, to compare them to the other acts Al chooses to parody here. Because it is exclusively flash-in-the-pans after that: MC Hammer, New Kids on the Block, Milli Vanilli and Gerardo. It's a real who's who of "who?" That drags the record a bit, which is a shame because it contains some of Al's strongest originals up to that point, as well as one of his best ever lead singles. 

The Parodies: Speaking of, "Smells Like Nirvana", is masterful work, taking a culture-defining song and turning it back around on the artist themself for a takedown that still plays just as well, if not even more so, to their fans. The track manages to work brilliant gags out of the instrumentation as well, making space for solos for a kazoo, tuba, and of course mouthwash. If we take both the song and video into account, I'd call it Al's strongest piece of straight parody up to that point. It was a massive success as well, propelling the album to Al's highest number on the charts yet and netting him a VMA nomination for Best Male Video (which he lost to "Tears in Heaven", which is maybe about as far from a Weird Al song as you can get). 

In the "flash in the pan" section, I'd say the MC Hammer parody "I Can't Watch This" fares the best by a considerable degree. It's Al's first real rapping showcase, as you aren't really stretching yourself as an MC doing a minute long parody of Licensed to Ill era Beastie Boys or imitating Tone Loc's laid back delivery. Even if MC Hammer's flow is somewhat primitive compared to later rappers Al would take on, like friggin' Krayzie Bone, this is the first chance he really gets to show off that rapping is very much a skill he can keep in his tool belt. The song itself finds Al going back to one of his favorite subjects: TV. Instead of skewering a particular show, he uses the song as an excuse to throw shots at all the crap polluting the airwaves at the time, with even some good shows catching strays ("Can't stand Twin Peaks / Wish they'd Lynch those donut-eatin' freaks!") It's nothing amazing, but its cute and manages for some fun lines ("Those Siskel and Ebert bums / Oughta go home and sit on their thumbs").

Unfortunately, there's a pretty big dropoff on the other 3 parodies here. "The White Stuff" (a song with a rather questionable name) already has a disadvantage going its way by being a parody of New Kids on the Block's "The Right Stuff", an all time bad pop song. Also, correct me if I'm wrong as I'm too young to really know this, but I feel NKOTB were old news by 92? This parody might have made sense on the UHF soundtrack, but I feel like parodying a boy band is a real "strike while the iron's hot" proposition. I can't imagine the reason for the wait was that Al was really taking his time to craft this one, either. There's some humor in modifying the original song's "oh-oh-oh-oh" chant so that it leads to "Oreo", but outside of that that this is just another food song that feels like it doesn't have much a joke beyond just being about food. 

"Taco Grande" is also parodying an all-time lame pop song in "Rico Suave" (again, this album serves as a good reminder for how badly the early 90's needed Nirvana). So we get Al adopting a questionable Latin accent (not even in that it's offensive, just that I don't that Weird Al Yankovic can really pull off "latin lover") to list off Mexican foods. It is cool that Cheech Marin shows up on this track, but that's about all it has going for it.

Oh, and to get back to groups that were truly already in the past by the time this record came out, we get "The Plumbing Song", a double parody for Milli Vanilli, mocking both "Baby, Don't Forget My Number" and "Blame It On the Rain". This is over a year after the lip syncing scandal that quickly spelled the end of the group's mainstream success, and I kind of wish Al brought some of the chip on his shoulder that he brought to Billy Ray Cyrus or George Harrison here. We get no references to the scandal, with the song instead just being a frankly rather boring tale of a plumber who's, ya know, good at plumbing. I think this one might have dethroned "Toothless People" as Al's least successful parody. 

The Originals: Thankfully, while I had some real issues with some of the parodies on this one, I like all of the originals. Case in point, "Trigger Happy", an homage to early Beach Boys surf tracks, only this one is about a Charlton Heston-esque gun nut. Not only does the track nail the feeling of those early surf rock tracks, it also has some of the most pointed material in Al's career ("I accidentally shot Daddy last night in the den / I mistook him in the dark for a drug-crazed Nazi again"). Unfortunately, in 2024, definitely still a very relevant song. 

Al also does his second Tonio K parody (see the album directly below this one in the ranking for more) "I Was Only Kidding". The song is another slap-in-the-face of energy, with Al bellowing and screeching over a fast-paced instrumental about how he was "only kidding" when he told his sweetheart he loved her. It's a classic prank we've all pulled. 

"When I Was Your Age" essentially plays out like a rock n' roll version of Monty Python's famous "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch. Al is the overbearing father character, lamenting to his child how much harder things were in his day and age. There's a lot of fun in the lyrics with the exaggerated nature of the claims ("We had to walk butt naked through 40 miles of snow"). 

"Airline Amy", like "Melanie" once again sees Al taking a slick melody to play someone with an obsessive crush on a person who doesn't know they exist. In this case, it's a flight attendant who the main character is convinced is giving him little hints and flirtations every time she gives him a bag of airline peanuts. It isn't quite as successful as Melanie (this one doesn't really build to anything, for one) but it's an enjoyable track nonetheless. 

We close on the ballad "You Don't Love Me Anymore" in which Al theorizes that the woman actively trying to kill him may in fact be over their relationship. It's a great way to go out, full of ridiculous violent imagery ("You put those piranhas in my bathtub again".) It was also one of the rare non-parodies of Al's to be released as a single, on the condition the music video be a parody (it ends up mocking the "More Than Words" video). I can see why this one was given the push; it's not one of Al's best ever songs but it's certainly rather undeniable. 

8. "Weird Al" Yankovic (1983)

And now we venture back to where it all started, with Al's self titled 1983 debut. Although it's a little bit more primitive and rough around the edges than the following year's In 3-D, in which Al completely locks into what his whole deal is, it's certainly a case of an artist arriving on the scene mostly fully formed. The parodies are more quick and obvious than the more sophisticated level of writing Al would graduate to (yes, I just used the word "sophisticated" in this article), but that can lend a crude charm to them. Plus, that direct approach leads to some of Al's most memorable parodies. This thing is also just brimming with ideas, as it's rad cover art (a take on Frank Zappa's Over-Nite Sensation that's maybe my favorite cover in Al's catalogue) indicates. As I mentioned above, "crude charm" is the name of the game here. This thing just reeks of "oh my God, they're letting me make an album??" in a really infectious way. 

The Parodies: Well, that charm doesn't extend to everything. Maybe I'd enjoy "Ricky", a parody of Toni Basil's "Mickey" in which Al adopts a Ricky Ricardo persona, if I grew up more on I Love Lucy, but despite it obviously being an iconic show it's never one I've really sat down with (the perils of being in your 20s trying to listen to 40 year old parodies of 70 year old shows). Honestly my main association with Lucy is Rat Race. Now I'm always happy to see (or I guess, hear) Tress MacNeille pop up, as she does here to play Lucy, but the song is too caught up in the specifics of the show to play for a non-fan at least. Like it's hard for me to know what to do with a line like "Fred eats all our pretzel sticks and then he spills he beer." I guess that character does that? It also doesn't help that I'm not all that amused by Al's Ricky impression, which it feels like you really have to be for this one to work. 

Something like "I Love Rocky Road", on the other hand, is the type of track I was talking about that uses its directness to its advantage. It succeeds in the most basic way a parody can, in that when I hear the original song in public, these are the lyrics that slot in my head. There's just something primal about it, like baby Al's first words were "one day there will be a song called 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll', and I will make a parody called 'I Love Rocky Road' with armpit fart sound effects." I imagine Baby Al was also born with massive curly hair and a mustache. And came out with glasses. And an accordion. Sorry, I'm working out the beats for my parody biopic movie about the life of Weird Al Yankovic (that's not an angle anyone's already gotten to, right?)

Similarly successful in that vein is Al's breakthrough single, the Dr. Demento certified smash "My Bologna". It's not the most sophisticated parody ever, and it was necessary for Al to evolve beyond something this rudimentary, but there is charm to something as blunt as these early food parodies. It's "My Sharona" but about bologna. I don't know what you want from me, that's pretty funny. The story of this song is the stuff of legend, with Al recording it in the bathroom across the hall from his college's radio station. Eventually it became such a hit on Dr. Demento's show that it reached it's way back to The Knack, the act behind "My Sharona", who then suggested to Capital Records they sign Al so they could release the parody as a single. They did, which Al thought would lead to a long and fruitful relationship with Capital. Instead, they dropped him right after they released the song. Luckily he had other tricks up his sleeve...

Al released "Another One Rides the Bus" shortly after "Bologna", and it was an even bigger hit (in the niche world of comedy radio novelty songs at this point, mind you, but still). Still feeling burned by Capitol, Al put together the money to release the song himself, on an EP along with three other originals. This would eventually lead to a deal at Scotti Brothers to release the album. This is another song with a famous recording story, with it being recorded live during a Dr. Demento broadcast. Al needed someone to bang on his accordion case, and recruited drummer Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, who just happened to be around that night, and who would go on to become Al's longtime drummer. You can feel that raw energy when you listen to the song itself, the lo-fi recording being guided along by stomps, claps, bangs, squeaks and, of course, accordion, all while Al sings in a frantic, frenzied screech. The makings of iconic stuff.

Not everything can fare so well though. See, for example, "Stop Dragging My Car Around", a parody of the Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty duet "Stop Dragging My Heart Around". It's not a bad premise, about a main character who can't go anywhere without his car getting towed, but it does feature one of the most questionable vocal inflections in Al's output. Again, not that I think it's particularly offensive to any sort of group or person, just...well, what is he doing with that voice? Still, it is the first of these parodies that really sees Al going slightly deeper with the lyrics and crafting a narrative, which is appreciated. 

The Originals: "Gotta Boogie" is pretty gloriously dumb. There aren't any particularly clever lyrics, there isn't any escalation; it's just a dance track about a guy with a booger on his finger. I can't get mad at that. 

"Buckingham Blues" was originally written as a John Mellencamp parody ("Gonna tell you a story about Chuck & Diane"), but rewritten into more of a generic blues (where have I heard that phrase before?) ballad about the woes of the newly-wed Prince Charles & Lady Diana. A song mocking Lady Di may play a little differently now, but this still mostly holds up as a sort of eye-roll (complete with a more lewd hand gesture, take your pick) to the Royal Family. Also, don't fret, Al did eventually get to do a straight "Jack & Diane" parody.

As alluded to earlier, we get a Tonio K homage in "Happy Birthday", a insane blast of energy that's perfectly balanced with its bitter, cynical, dark lyrics ("There's nowhere you can run to, nowhere you can hide / When they drop the big one, we all get fried / Happy birthday!") Forget those miserly old crones Mildred and Patty Hill, this should be our new birthday anthem. 

"The Check's In the Mail" is another fun track, with its jazzy, speakeasy vibe. Songs about the music industry can sometimes risk being too insider to really connect to (think of the countless Eminem songs about the perils of being Eminem), but luckily the shady manager character here most ends up representing disingenuous, slimy people you have to deal with in general ("Don't try to call me, I'll be in a meeting every afternoon.") A real toe-tapper of a hook on this one too. 

Speaking of catchy hooks, "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead", um, also has one (back to the rough transtions!). But yea, this is probably the best of the originals from the album just on a pure songwriting front. It's one of the moments on the album that show how Al's ambitions stretched beyond your typical novelty act. Unlike some of the more primitive production across the record, this one features multi-part harmonies, guitar solos and beat switch ups. The more frenzied production fits the theme of the song, too, about a man who avoids relaxing at all cost ("No Joni Mitchell 8-tracks in my car"). 

"Such a Groovy Guy" isn't bad, but is probably the least the memorable of the originals on the album. Part of the problem is it doesn't have a very strong concept, it's hard to tell what the overarching premise is here. Still, the chorus is strong enough to make up for a lot of issues. 

Then, finally, we get "Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung", one of the most giddily mean-spirited songs Al would ever make. On the off chance someone is reading this and isn't intimately familiar with Al's catalogue, I don't even want to spoil this one. It's less than 2 minutes long, go seek it out and hang your head in shame as you giggle. 

Coming Soon: We finish off in style, as I go through the remainder on the list and reveal my Top 27 Favorite Weird Al Songs!