"NO, WE'RE ALL OUT OF BEARCLAWS!" Ranking Weird Al's Albums, Worst to Best - Part 2 (7-1)

 7. Mandatory Fun (2014)

It's nice bit of symmetry that we left off on Al's debut album and come back here with his most recent. This was a big one for Al, too. It was his final album on his contract, and he's indicated it may be his final album all together. It also represented a major milestone: Al's first number one album. That's pretty mind boggling for a comedy record, especially in 2014, but I think it speaks to - beyond an extremely clever marketing campaign - the infinite amount of good will Al has built up over the years. And hey! It's actually pretty dang good, too, which is neat. 

The Parodies: I am a bit confused by the choice of album opener. Later tracks on the album like "Foil" or "Tacky" feel like perfect ways to start things off, but "Handy"? As I mentioned on the last article, it doesn't help a parody's prospects when the song it's aping is one I'm not a fan of, and I can't say Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" is a song I'm crazy about. Also, the album opener on an Al album is typically the lead single, so am I to believe this would have been the lead single had the album had a typical release? Again, the other two I mentioned feel like much better options. It's not the funniest song concept either, with the song basically acting as an extended advertising jingle for a handyman. Like "The Plumbing Song" there just isn't a ton of inherent comedy in just describing a blue collar job. I guess this is Al's attempt at another "White & Nerdy", but it hits less when the original artist is already....moving on.

Luckily, as I mentioned, "Foil" is much better. At first it deceptively seems like a throwback to the more simple, food pun based nature of Al's earlier work, reshaping Lorde's "Royals" into a track extolling the virtues of aluminum foil. Initially, those virtues just extend to wrapping up food, and how foil will do the job better than Tupperware or other such inferior products. But then we get an ominous shift in the second verse as our narrator reveals his obsession with conspiracies theories ("Soon you've got black helicopters comin' cross the border / Puppet masters for the New World Order / Be aware, there's always someone that's watching you"). That wraps back around brilliantly for the final reveal, as the narrator points out foil's final and greatest feature: you can wrap it around your head to block the government from reading your thoughts.

"Word Crimes", by all indications (streaming numbers, YouTube views, it was the highest charting song on the album - hitting the top 40!), is the biggest song on the album. That surprises me, because I feel like I remember more hype around "Tacky" than anything, but I guess that might just be me remembering that song's cameo filled video. I don't think this one is quite as successful as that track; like some of the songs on Alpocalypse it's a little too mired in the time that it came out, with Al lecturing the youngins on proper grammar. Which I suppose is evergreen in a way, but there is a certain "you kids and your texting" tone to the track. Though to be clear, that doesn't hold this one back too much, as it's still an enjoyable track ultimately. Extra points for how it takes an obnoxious song (Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines") and sands off the edges enough to bring it to a place where it can be genuinely fun without having to think about Robin Thicke's big...moving on.

"Inactive" faces the challenge of being a parody of an Imagine Dragons song ("Radioactive"), which, why would Al do that to himself? Out of all the targets to mimic, you go with the group that was the exact point where butt rock met flavorless EDM? Speaking of flavorless, there isn't a ton to this one lyrically either, focusing on a lazy narrator with fittingly lazy lyrics (you can do better than "cheeto dust" jokes, Al).

Luckily we bounce back with "Tacky", a take on Pharrell Williams' "Happy". Once again, this track manages to take a slightly obnoxious original (though certainly in a less sleazy way in this case than "Blurred Lines") and rework it to highlight the parts of the song that do work. Part of that is also just down to Al's infectious delivery on this one. If this ends up Al's last straight parody, it's certainly not a bad way to go out. 

The Originals: "Lame Claim to Fame" is an homage to Southern Culture on the Skids, an admirably obscure point of parody. Al definitely wasn't paying homage to them for anyone's sake other than his own. The track focuses on a narrator who obsesses over even the most trivial connections to celebrity culture he can form. It's not side-splitting, but it does provide some fairly amusing details ("My neighbor's babysitter dated three of the guys in Mötley Crüe").

"Sports Song", as its title indicates, is a take on those fight songs people sing in the crowds at college football games. Those songs are typically, you know, lame, which means sonically this one might not be much to write home about, but there's an energy to the song that makes it listenable. There's a decent amount of juice to an incredibly literal fight song (though they do stop to tell you when they're being figurative). I feel like we could twist that even further, and really pound into the ground how literal we are with our brags until things just become thuddingly inane. We have traces of that in here ("Your sports team will soon suffer swift defeat / That theory's backed up by empirical evidence"), but I just wish it pushed even beyond that. Still, it's enjoyable for what's essentially an interlude. 

"My Own Eyes", a Foo Fighters parody, is about a man who's seen a myriad of disturbing things he wish he could unsee. It's another song in the style of "Stuck in a Closet With Vanna White", where there's less of a straight forward narrative and it's more a collection of whacky details, some more inspired than others (a "Bieber fever" reference is just an automatic eye-roll from me).

"Mission Statement" is a parody of corporate jargon, essentially mishmashing together words and phrases like "synergy" and "market share vis-à-vis" to create something that sounds impressive but means nothing. It's a cute little challenge Al set himself. Another challenge Al rises to is mimicing the angelic harmonies of Crosby, Still, Nash & Young with himself as his only vocal partner. It's surprisingly effective, and is one of the prettier sounding songs in Al's catalogue. 

"First World Problems" might also be rooted firmly in the year it came out, at least in terms of its name, but there's always fun to be had mocking the petty problems of the obscenely wealthy. There are a lot of good lines here, but I think my favorite might just be the understated ridiculousness of "I bought too many groceries for my refrigerator".  This is a Pixies pastiche, heavily modeled around "Debaser". If there's one knock I have against this one, I think Al could have gone even further in mimicking the insane vocal antics of Black Francis. Think of his insane choices in songs like "Crackity Jones" or "Mr. Grieves". Al will occasionally attempt that kind of flourish, but it doesn't quite permeate the performance to give it the real kick it needs. But that's a quibble on what's otherwise a highlight. 

We close on a 9 minute epic, the Cat Stevens pastiche "Jackson Park Express". As we've seen and will continue to see as we go through the discography, two things Al loves are songs where he can stretch out the runtime and romantic songs about failing or even non-existent relationships. So it's fitting he might have closed out his run with a song that's both. This is a long one, for sure, but it's worth the journey, as it sports some incredibly sharp writing ("She picked up her newspaper, and started reading to herself / Which I'm sure, was a way of telling me 'When you're cold, I will warm you'). 

6. Dare To Be Stupid (1985)

The placement I ended up flipping back-and-forth the most on with this list is the one for this album and the next one to come up on the list (spoilers for a little further down the page), the previous year's Weird Al Yankovic in 3-D. They're of a very similar quality in the end; neither quite hit the consistency of songwriting he'd hit on in his later records (more on that in a second), but both are still very enjoyable, streamlined comedy albums. Some of Al's best songs are here, full stop. It just doesn't quite hit the level of overall consistency he'd come to in his peak years, with some of the parodies especially getting a bit sloppy. 

The Parodies: "Like a Surgeon" is famously the one time Al's really taken a suggestion for a parody from someone else (a thing he probably still gets pitches for constantly), and he got this one straight from the source of parody themself. As the story goes, Madonna was walking with a friend and wondered aloud "when is Weird Al gonna go ahead and do 'Like a Surgeon'?". That friend happened to know Al's manager at the time, and when the question was posed to him his response was essentially "huh...yea, I should do that." And hey, Madonna and Al both had the right instinct: this is a pretty infectious parody of a pretty infectious song. I especially like the disgusting touch of Al pulling his patient's insides out to "see what he ate". 

The Huey Lewis parody "I Want a New Duck" just feels a little too juvenile. Which usually isn't a bad thing for me at all. But, listen. The lack of profanity and particularly explicit material in his music means that Al is an artist than can appeal to everyone. Which is part of what I love about him, that he can make such memorable and enjoyable tracks without resorting to cheap and hacky material. But that lack of overtly risque material naturally means he ends up with a lot of children as fans. Which, again, I have no problem with! But this is one of his few songs where the alchemy feels off and he just feels like a straight up act for little kids. The track just feels a hair too cutesy, especially once we get into the quacking sound effects. It didn't surprise me at all to find out Disney later repurposed this for DisneyTV ads featuring Donald Duck, it feels like it was commissioned for that. 

"Yoda" was written way before Al's debut, in 1980, around the release of The Empire Strikes Back. It was even one of his early Dr. Demento hits. But the complexities of getting the rights to both The Kinks "Lola" and the characters of Star Wars universe meant it didn't see the light of day on a record until here, on Al's third album. It certainly does a lot to boost this record, because I just eat this nerdy shizz up (trying to pay proper tribute to Al and not swear in these). This is the first of the tracks where Al tells the story of a famous movie property over a classic rock tune, and I just dig all of them, especially the Star Wars ones. This is unabashed, joyous music for mega-dorks, and I love it's firm commitment to that. 

Dorky in a less positive way is "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch". Apparently Cyndi Lauper was just such hot shizz (okay I promise I'll stop that now) that the label basically forced Al into doing a parody of one of the She's So Unusual singles. Thus we get "Lunch", a song with a lame concept that's being sung with Al adopting the nasally whine of a schoolyard bully. It's impressively passively aggressive, if nothing else (and it is nothing else, really).  

And the "George of the Jungle" theme is, uh, the George of the Jungle theme. I wasn't even sure which section to put it in, but I guess it's not an "original". From what I gather, and this is less officially confirmed than the Cyndi Lauper stuff, Al's label had also been pressuring him to do a straight cover (dumb), so this was his response. In that sense I can respect it, though like "I Want a New Duck", it does feel a little too close to something I might find on a Wiggles album. 

The Originals: Title track "Dare To Be Stupid" is Al's most famous original song; it was his first original to be released as a single, included on the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack and is a concert staple to this day. It's not hard to see why, out of all of Al's artist pastiches this is one of the most deadly accurate, basically making the best Devo song that never was. There's a famous clip of Mark Mothersbaugh having a sort of Salieri moment on I Love the 80's in response to the track, and while it's obviously partly in jest, I think there is something genuinely beautiful in reworking the soundscapes of a particular artist and then making such an effort to recapture their sound to make something that's equal parts tribute and loving send up. 

Doo-wop pardoy "One More Minute" is another highlight. As I just mentioned, Al would go one to do a lot of these "pretty sounding love songs about terrible relationships", but this still stands right up there "Melanie" as the best of them. Mainly because, like "Melanie" this track really does capture the "pretty" part of that equation, with a sticky hook and some real nice harmonies to contrast against the violently bitter lyrics ("'Cause I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass / Than spend one more minute with you"). 

"Slime Creatures from Outer Space" is the middle entry in Al's trilogy of theme songs for fake movies, this time taking form of a Thomas Dolby esque theme for a B-movie sci-fi flick about the titular slug like aliens taking over the world. This isn't on the level of "Nature Trail to Hell", or even "Attack of the Radioactive Hamster from a Planet Near Mars", but like those tracks it brings enough energy that it never feels like a diversion. I especially enjoy the juxtaposition of "They'll suck your brain out through a straw / You just can't trust those guys." 

"This Is the Life" was the theme from Johnny Dangerously, meaning, amazingly, it's the third original track on here to get its own video. This one is an homage to speakeasy jazz (though it does have a humorously out of place electric guitar solo) about a wealthy yuppie (or whatever they called them in the 20s) type figure. I feel the song could go deeper with this, either placing the character in some kind of narrative or perhaps playing up the grotesqueness of his absurd habits, but as is it doesn't move very far beyond its initial idea. It does have some choices lines at though, especially "If money can't buy happiness / I guess I'll have to rent it".

"Cable TV" is an Elton John homage, particularly tracks like "Hercules". It's by no means a bad track, but in the grand scheme of songs where Al talks about TV it understandably gets lost in the shuffle a bit. It's a well produced track, so I'm certainly not mad at it, but it just feels like a lesser execution of something he'd do better before and after. 

5. "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D (1984)

The album that made Al a household name. Casey Killingsworth left a comment on the last post (a thing I encourage by the way - tell me I'm pretty) saying he felt there was a general sense of more elevated songwriting on Al's later records. Which I'd largely agree with. These early albums have some bangers (and yes, I just used that word in a Weird Al article), but I'd say you can feel Al's skills as a songwriter slowly growing throughout his catalogue, until he finally comes back with Bad Hair Day and has a renewed, deeper sense of writing and melody than he ever did before. That doesn't rob these early albums of their charm though. Indeed, sometimes the simplicity of certain songs can even add to their charm. And that's not to say this isn't a well written, performed and produced album. This is already at an elevated state for what you expect of comedy music. But there's still a slightly rough "having fun discovering what I can even do on an album" charm here that papers over most any potentially undercooked material. This is also not to say this doesn't represent a major leap in artistry from the first album. While that was a throughly entertaining novelty record, here Al makes the steps that would ultimately lead to his longevity. The ever-present accordion on the last album provided a unique sound for Al, but it was likely necessary for his mainstream success he learned to write songs with more traditional instrumentation, as he does here. We get a wider variety of songs here as well, with more genre detours, the introduction of the polka medleys, and the first "epic" track in Al's discography.

The Parodies: As often seems to happens, the final song recorded for the album was its biggest hit, and one of the biggest hits of Al's career. "Eat It" was the song that launched Al into mainstream success, making him an MTV favorite and winning him his first Grammy in the process. It's pretty good. Not to double up on phrases I used last article, but this is the ultimate "does what it says on the tin" of Al's discography. It's a "Beat It" parody. About food. It's a pretty good approximation of the original instrumental. Al does a silly voice. It has a funny video. Its not ultimately the most impressive thing Al ever made, but its also pretty impossible to deny as a pop culture artifact.

"The Brady Bunch" is another in a long line of TV jams from Al, this one riffing on "The Safety Dance". This has the same basic structure as his later "Achy Breaky Song" would have, with Al insisting he's fine with any dumb show you put on that doesn't have the Bradys. Having had to sit through their 70's variety show before, I completely understand where he's coming from.

"I Lost on Jeopardy", a parody The Greg Kihn Band's "Jeopardy", is the first time Al truly pulled out all the stops for a piece. The song, which came out only months before Jeopardy! was revived with Alex Trebek, features original Jeopardy! announcer (and famous long-time SNL announcer) Don Pardo giving voice over. Pardo, as well as original Jeopardy! host Art Flemming, along with Greg Kihn himself, all appear in the track's video. It's fun to compare with "Ricky" off the previous record, and see how much more Al already has at his disposal to use in these parodies. It really helps to sell the track as it builds to Don Pardo calling Al a complete loser in his legendary booming voice. 

"King of Suede", a parody of The Police's "King of Pain", is the weakest of the parodies here. For one, it's another track where Al adopts a rather grating voice to sing in, which doesn't help things. But more than that, the track, which stretches its legs a bit at over 4 minutes, just doesn't really find any sort of notable escalation. It's a somewhat funny idea to take this earnest ballad and use it as a way to frame an advertisement for a tacky suit salesman, but there needs to be some sort of additional twist to the premise in there that just never comes. 

"Theme From Rocky XIII" has more of an idea at least, mainly, "hey, they sure are making a lot of Rocky movies, huh?" Funny enough, a lot of this song's premise, about Rocky getting old and buying a deli, ends up happening in Creed. So, extra points for prescience. 

The Originals: "Midnight Star" is the second track on the album, coming directly after "Eat It". Which kind of makes me wonder how many people were listening, especially those who hadn't realized yet Al did his own originals in addition to the parodies, and were trying to place what hit song it was parodying. Because if you space out and don't focus on the lyrics mocking supermarket tabloid magazines ("The ghost of Elvis is living in my den"), this has a lot of the hallmarks of a big 80's hit. It's got an absolute monster of a hook, some solid vocal harmonies, and some synth sounds that are equal part rad and cheesy. 

The reggae parody "Buy Me a Condo" is maybe a song Al wouldn't do today, but its intent isn't in any way malicious. It's basically an update on "Buffalo Soldier" for the modern age, about a guy who moves from Jamaica to the States to become a good ol' fashioned dorky American ("Gonna sell me Bob Marley records / Gonna get me some Jackson Browne"). It's a solid satirical take, though I think we could lean way harder even on the lameness of the American values the character is adopting into. At end of the track, Al runs through the chorus several times, and it feels like a lost opportunity to not add new lyrics to the hook, as I feel like he would in later years. 

The B-52's parody "Mr. Popeil" is a song that's destined to only half work for me. I like the B-52's, and this song does a good job recreating their herky jerky charm. I also enjoyed finding out the backing vocals in this track were provided by none other than Lisa Popeil, a session singer who's worked with acts like Frank Zappa and happens to be the daughter of this song's subject, Sam Popeil. "Mr. Popeil", the inventor of the Veg-O-Matic, as well as his son Ron Popeil, founder of "Ronco", were TV infomercial staples all the way up to until the 80's. Unfortunately, I was born after the 80's. So I'm kinda screwed for context on this one. But it sounds nice! 

"That Boy Could Dance" is a cheery little number about a scrawny nerd, utterly inept in every way except for his ability to cut a rug. It's hardly a highlight, but its entertaining enough to warrant a spot in the tracklist, featuring some fun lines ("He had a complexion that resembled the surface of Mars") and a spirited performance from Al's band. 

Fan favorite "Nature Trail to Hell" is the first time Al really committed to a longer track, sitting at almost 6 minutes. It's also the first, and strongest, in his previously mentioned trilogy of theme songs for fake movies. The fake movie in question this time is Nature Trail to Hell - In 3-D!, a parody of generic early 80s slashers, mainly the Friday the 13th series. We get some pretty good lines in there satirizing the proliferation of these flicks at the time ("No, you'll never see hideous effects like these again / 'Till we bring you Nature Trail to Hell Part 2"). You can feel the length a little, but it is impressive as the first time Al tests himself like this and truly opens up a song.

4. Running With Scissors (1999)

These top four spots are all a bit of a toss up. This whole era from Hair Day to Lynwood is about equally consistent throughout, so at this point ranking them is just down to more dubiously definable stuff like "how it flows". Which this one does pretty well! We get some career highlights in the mix, and the lows are never too low. The album cover is a fitting one, because it essentially plays like a victory lap for Al. This was 15 years after his big break through, and despite what anyone would have thought in 1984, it was the turn of the century and Al had as many fans as ever. So fittingly, this one doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel, but rather gives a taste of Al doing everything we love him for, and doing it well.

Parodies: I've mentioned what an easy mark I am for these "Al adapts the story of a famous sci-fi/action movie into an iconic rock song" tracks, and "The Saga Begins" is the best of them of all. Why? Because it manages to make the gosh darn (boy, I remember this no swearing thing being easier in the first article) Phantom Menace sound like a good movie. The track is just breaking down the overall story of what happens in that boring mess of a film, and somehow you hear it and go "man, I gotta watch this thing!" That is raw power. 

"Pretty Fly For a Rabbi" sees Al figuring out what Borscht Belt comics have known for decades: almost all Yiddish words are funny. "He never acts meshugga and he's hardly a schlemiel"? That's good stuff! There isn't a ton more to this one, and it's a bit odd to hear Al parody a song that's basically already intended to be comedic, but it works as a light-hearted little send up. 

"Jerry Springer", a parody of Barenaked Ladies' "One Week", is one of the angrier songs in Al's catalogue. You can tell from listening he really did have a distaste for Springer's famous daytime talk show, with this song practically reveling in the filth like no other Weird Al song before or since. I can confidently say, now that I've gone through his entire catalogue, he's never had a single line as caustic as "Five days since they had the show / With the hermaphrodite, the slut, and the crack ho". I don't think those blunt descriptions are meant to taken at face value; the undertone of the song is clearly "this is trash and these people are being exploited". But I can see how this song might be off-putting to some. Even on his darker songs, Al still feels like he's trying to be for everyone, but there is something especially nasty here that I can understand not jiving right with the Al image for some. I mean, there's a whole interlude in the middle with Al & Tress MacNeille playing a couple where Al reveals he's been sleeping with Tress's dog. Now I'm not saying that as a negative, but I see where this could push about the level of bad taste some people allow from a Weird Al song.

"It's All About the Pentiums" is a sort of preview of "White & Nerdy". Both take a big rap song of the moment, in this case the remix to "It's All About the Benjamins" by Puff Daddy AKA Diddy AKA Inmate No. 6325135765. And both rework them to be about an utter dweeb, with Al in this one essentially playing Jimmy Fallon's Nick The I.T. Guy character from SNL. Though the writing here is far more keyed-in than that character ever was; you can tell Al really did his research here. "I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM" still plays as a joke even now. I'll also admit that that rock remix of "Benjamins" was always a guilty pleasure of mine, and now that it's something I'll never again be able to get pleasure from, I am happy this one exists as a way to still enjoy that ridiculously over-the-top 90's guitar blare. 

"Zoot Suit Riot" parody "Grapefruit Diet" is only parody here to miss for me really. It's not bad, helped by Al's band doing an impressive job capturing the sound of the original, but the lyrics feel like a bit of a retread for him. It's about an overweight guy who has to lose weight with a new diet, meaning we just end up with more fat and food jokes. It just feels a bit too obvious at this point in Al's career. 

The Originals: "My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder" is a hoedown ready track about a piece of the blues we can all relate to: when your love leaves you for the lead singer of Pearl Jam. This isn't my favorite track on the album, but it's nice and upbeat enough that it doesn't detract in any way. There's plenty to like here too; like I'm always happy when Al breaks out the accordion for a non-polka track. And I do strangely love the rhyme of "sexy" with "Generation X-y".

"The Weird Al Show Theme" is, well, that. I don't have a ton to say about it, as it barely clocks in at over a minute, but it's a really fun little theme, so I get why Al wanted it on a record.

Nine Inch Nails parody "Germs" nails the Nine Inch Nails side of things at least. Al really gets the menacing, paranoid textures of that group's industrial production down so well that I just wish the writing were a little stronger. I think it's a fantastic starting place to use that menacing, paranoid production I was talking about and change the context so its just about a huge germaphobe. But I feel like at that point the track should really commit to the horror and go all out with this guy's insane obsession to stay clean, and what that's cost him. Have him go full quarantine-mode Frank Reynolds by the end. But I mean that's mostly just picking nits (which, good, get those nasty nits out my hair. Damn germs!) 

Ska track "Your Horoscope For Today" might feature the catchiest hook of Al's career, full stop. That "yay, yay, yay, yay" refrain has popped in and out of my head for months now. This song is just a blast of joy to the face. The lyrics are quite strong too, but it really is one of those tracks where I'm having so much fun jamming along to it I don't even really pay attention to those. I have to imagine Al also thinks one is a bit of a secret major highlight in his catalogue as well, as last year, 24 years after the track's original release, Al uploaded a new animated music video for it. 

"Truck Drivin' Song", on the other hand, certainly doesn't inspire a similar kind of joy. It's a "Convoy"-esque track about a deep voiced man who drives around the country in his big ol' truck, all while wearing his favorite dress and high heels. To the song's credit, considering the time period it came out in, it never seems to explicitly judge its protagonist for cross dressing, more deriving its humor simply from the contrast of appearance and occupation. This is what I was talking about above where the "flow" of this album just doesn't quite live up to records still to come in the list, as this is the weakest of the originals and it comes directly after "Grapefruit Diet", the weakest parody. Neither of those songs are awful, but it does lead to a unfortunately skippable section right towards the end of the record. 

Fan favorite "Albuquerque" is Al's longest song, standing at over 11 minutes long. It's also the best of his "epic" tracks, that clock in at around 6 minutes or over. Unlike those other longer songs where Al can sometimes struggle to justify the excess length, this one brilliantly makes that the whole point. The whole song is a beautifully inane pile up of detours, culdesacs and just general rambling, all in an attempt to troll anyone who dare find a point in the whole thing. Al even performs the song even longer in concerts, often stopping near the end to start over as he "lost" his place (he's also added an apology in concerts for using the word "hermaphrodite" on this song - the second use of that term on the album, strangely enough - in a move that's half-sincere, half-adding to the gag of the song). This is like the rake gag if Sideshow Bob stepped on a thousand rakes. Just a ridiculous song and I love it.

3. Straight Outta Lynwood (2006)

The "Al"bum™ I have the most connection to, as its the only one I previously owned and had heard in its entirety before setting out on this project. "White & Nerdy", one of Al's most iconic parodies, came out when I was (brace yourselves if you need to) 8 years old, which is pretty ideal age for something like that to come across your radar. I probably bought this album about a year later, and while I had pieced together a decent portion of his catalogue soon after on iTunes (remember 99 cent songs?), this was until recently the only one where I knew everything. And while it might not ultimately be the overall strongest album from Al, it is a good one to represent his strengths as an artist. There are tons of genre detours in here, almost all executed well. While I enjoy both of his records that came after this, especially Mandatory Fun, this represents the end of a decade where Al was really in the pocket with his songwriting, and pretty much all the originals here really hit. The parodies are a bit more of a mixed bag, but of course they kick off with a major highlight at least...

The Parodies: "White & Nerdy" still rules. Yes, that's a very "white and nerdy" opinion, but it's true. Part of that is its just impossible to separate my nostalgia for this one. Part of Al's remarkable success is if you ask members of different generations what his defining, most iconic song is, you wouldn't always get the same answer. If you were around in the 80's, you might still say "Eat It". If you were a 90's kid, it's "Amish Paradise". And if you're in your 20's like me, it has to be this one. It has a legitimate claim to it too, being Al's first and only top 10 hit, and, depending on where you fall on the "white and nerdy" scale, a song that's arguably eclipsed its parody source in fame at this point (no diss to Chamillionaire, I think that song's still a banger too). But really the thing you have to commend here is just Al's insane dedication to the bit, adopting the machine-gun flow of Chamillionaire and a friggin' member of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony with seeming ease. And even though the lines flow by at an accelerated pace, Al's still dropping gems in there ("M.C. Escher—that's my favorite M.C."). Amazingly, this wasn't even meant to be the lead single. Al had a James Blunt parody, "You're Pitiful", all ready to go, only for Blunt's label to axe it at the last moment. That song is fine, but it would have never got the response this one did (neither would have the other cut track from this album, where Al went back to the Gilligan's Island well AGAIN with the T-Pain parody "I'm In Love With the Skipper"). Luckily the right thing ended up happening. I can attest, this song earned Al a whole new legion of young fans, and he deserved every one of them after this. (Also fun fact for those unaware, the video has an early appearance from Key & Peele!)

Green Day parody "Canadian Idiot" certainly isn't a song I'm as crazy about as I was when I was 9, but it's not a bad track either. Still, I feel like maybe we've just had enough jokes about how Canadians say "sorry" and "about" funny for one lifetime? I do enjoy the way the song contradicts itself at one point and starts complimenting Canada ("Sure, they've got their national healthcare / Cheaper meds, low crime rates and clean air"). But it just feels a little hokey? What? No Canadians, I didn't say "hockey", you can settle down. Slide whistle.

"Confessions Pt. III" has a bit more of an idea to it. In the first songs in the "Confessions" series, Usher confesses to his boo (as he was known to call her) his tales of infidelity and a secret pregnancy. Well, what if he felt the need to continue getting things off his chest, but the only lies left to uncover were either insignificant ("Remember when I told you that I knew Pauly Shore? ...That's a lie, I don't know what I said that for") or just petty ("Baby, forgive me, I'm still trying to figure out / Why I used your toothbrush to clean off the bathroom grout")? The part where Al belts out "I'm so sorry Debbie -- I mean Bridget!" especially has always kicked around in my head. 

"Do I Creep You Out?" is a parody of a Taylor Hicks song. Remember him? From American Idol? One of the least memorable winners during the era where, for some unfortunate reason, we all were watching that show. Or at least everyone I knew in elementary school was watching it, as an extension of all of our parents and older siblings watching it. I guess the show being such a phenomenon led Al to believe he had to mock it in some way; at least that's my theory of why he's parodying such a unremarkable song. It's not awful by any means, but in that sub-genre of Al songs I mentioned earlier of "pretty love songs about deeply dysfunctional relationships (which often exist solely inside the protagonist's head)", it's towards the bottom, if not occupying the very last spot. There are some admirably dark lyrics ("Gonna carve your name in my leg" is a doozy), but it just doesn't quite feel up to par with the rest of the record. Even "Canadian Idiot" offers more charm.

Speaking of mid 00's phenomenons, we get a "Trapped in the Closet" parody here, a thing that was practically required by law of comics around 2005. "Trapped In the Drive-Thru" is one of the better ones, eschewing gross pee jokes for an extended (and I mean extended) tale of a disappointing dinner shared between a couple. Like a lot of Al's longer songs, the joke starts to become just how much he's letting himself ramble. This isn't his peak in the regard (that's just ahead), but its got a lot of fun little detours, including my favorite, stopping the song so the protagonist can listen to a bit of "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin. It's another one, like "Canadian Idiot", that I maybe don't love as much now as I did at 9, but it's surprisingly worthwhile for a 10 minute song about fast food. 

The Originals: Al already paid homage to the early era of The Beach Boys on Off the Deep End, but like The Beatles that's a group that sounded drastically different in 1966 from how they did in 1963. So here we get a parody of the psychedelic Pet Sounds / Smile era of Brian Wilson songwriting with "Pancreas". I'm a pretty huge Beach Boys fan, so I'm always going to be extremely susceptible to a well executed loving homage to them (case in point: I adore the whole section of Walk Hard where Dewey Cox goes full Brian Wilson and unleashes this misunderstood masterpiece on the world). And this is certainly well executed, so much so there's video of a member of Brian Wilson's band at the time stopping Al at a record store to thank him for doing the song, and telling him the whole band watched it on the bus and agreed he "nailed it". I think that says more than I ever could for this one. 

Rage Against the Machine parody "I'll Sue Ya!" is a really fun track, celebrating Americans' God-given right to sue the pants off anybody they like. Considering we get a reference to it in the track, I'd guess the case it's specifically riffing on is the notorious lawsuit a woman had against McDonalds because she scalded her legs with their coffee, which should have been labeled "hot". Either way, it's a vehicle for a series of quick punchlines that are more hit than miss about the various frivolous things Al has sued people for. And much in the way I'm sure there are actually a ton of Canadians who have a strange fondness for "Canadian Idiot", being a Jersey native my favorite line is of course "I sued Delta Airlines / 'Cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey / I went there, and it sucked!"

"Virus Alert" is a good example of the type of elevated songwriting I'm talking about from Al in this era. It's an homage to cult favorite art pop duo Sparks, and not only does he take the effort for it to really sound at home in their catalogue, but it's just a damn fine song in its own right. Sure, as a track about computer viruses hidden in chain emails it's very rooted in its time, like a lot of what I complained about on Alpocalypse, but there can be a charm to that when its not compromising the majority of the material on an album. Maybe not every line hits (do we really need a Gigli reference when Al just dissed Ben Affleck on "I'll Sue Ya"?) but this is a case where the track is strong enough musically to more than make up for that. Though it will never not be weird to hear a "porn" mention on a Weird Al track.

"Weasel Stomping Day" is more of an interlude than anything, clocking in at just over a minute and a half. It's a cheery track mirroring songs from animated musicals, about a town's quaint little traditional to stomp the ever-loving crud out of the town's poor weasel population. This track would eventually make it's way onto a Robot Chicken episode, which is probably the better forum for it than an album, but I'm not mad at its inclusion here. 

"Close But No Cigar" is another really strong track, parodying Cake to tell the tale of a man who keeps meeting the perfect woman, only to end things for extremely trivial reasons (i.e. using "infer" where she means "imply"). I really dig the instrumentation here, especially the horns that pop up throughout the track. The only thing I don't enjoy about the track is its truly ghastly video animated by John K, a man who's lost the sauce so hard it ended up in another country. 

We close out with another topic that was on everyone's mind in the mid aughts: illegally downloaded music. Luckily, on "Don't Download This Song", Al doesn't go full Lars Ulrich (who gets name-dropped), and instead does a fully sarcastic "We Are the World" inspired charity ballad to warn people of the evils of downloaded music. Not that I think this song is implicitly supporting illegally downloading music; I'm sure, like many artists, Al didn't love the idea of people getting access to his hard work for free (have fun in the future, 2006 Al!). In fact, Al had more reason than most to be annoyed at sites like Napster and Limewire, as he claims they would often label any comedy track that popped up on there as "Weird Al", meaning his name would be attached to all kinds of random explicit, hacky or even downright racist content. Still, he understands how millionaires yelling at people about what they do on their computers plays, and the song is an effective mockery of that ("It doesn't matter if you're a grandma or a seven-year-old girl / They'll treat you like the evil, hard bitten, criminal scum you are").

2. Bad Hair Day (1996)

What puts Bad Hair Day up so high for me is it really doesn't have those moments other albums here do where the pace can feel lagging or interrupted. Some tracks are better than others, obviously, but the lowest it ever really bottoms out are tracks that are still passable. The album is also a nice snapshot of the mid nineties, with a tracklist full of grunge, alternative rock and R&B. We even get one of my favorite polkas in "The Alternative Polka" (even if it's a shame Rivers Cuomo wouldn't let Al include "Buddy Holly" in there). It's a nice way to have the album feel distinctly of its era in a way that feels authentic rather than dated, by taking its influences from the sounds of the time rather than focusing on trends or pop culture fads. It also has a special spot for kicking off a run so strong that Al never needed another "comeback" album; after this record (his highest selling, going double platinum), Al being loved was never again in question.

The Parodies: Okay, so probably even more than the album itself, one song in particular here secured Al's legacy. As I mentioned earlier, to a certain generation "Amish Paradise" is unquestionably Al's most iconic song, and really, they might be right. It's his most streamed song on Spotify, his second most watched video on YouTube; everyone knows this one. It's certainly one I've always been a fan of: when I was 9 I could rap every word of this thing. I could still probably do most of it. "Amish rap" is the type of idea that can only be funny exactly one time before it just becomes fully corny, and since he does have the opportunity Al milks every joke out of it he can. "Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1699" remains one of the best lyrics of Al's career. The video takes the song to even further heights, with classic moments like the Buster Keaton homage. There was of course a famous bit of controversy after the song came out, with Coolio lashing out at Al in the press. But that all got ultimately mended and isn't worth commenting on here outside of me wanting to avoid comments mentioning that I didn't comment on it (as I said earlier, please leave comments. Just not, ya know, annoying ones.)

"Cavity Search" is a dentistry themed parody of "Hold Me, Squeeze Me, Sue Me, Grill Me" or whatever it's called by U2. You know, the Batman Forever song that isn't "Kiss From a Rose" or the Method Man one. I shouldn't act like U2 get an instinctive eye roll from me like they do from some people my age, at least not at this point in their career, but I don't think the original song is all that great, which does make this one of the more just merely passable songs I mentioned earlier. It doesn't stand out immensely, but it doesn't hurt the flow of the album at all. There are some clever touches too, like having the distorted guitar wail of the original harmonize with dentist drills, or mocking Bono's breathy ad libs to sound like that, you know, that little air machine. Whatever that's called. I especially enjoy the falsetto-y delivery of "oy vey".

"Gump" tells the tale of its titular hero to the tune of "Lump" by The Presidents of the United States of America. It's not the greatest of Al's song where he retells the story of a famous film, but it's certainly a fun track, gaining a lot of traction from how ridiculous the plot points of that movie are, especially when just stated in a blunt fashion ("He told JFK that he really had to pee"). Good closing line too.

"Syndicated Inc.", a parody of "Misery" by Soul Asylum is probably the low-point of the record, if it has one. It's another TV centered song for Al, and while it's not bad at all, it might be his least memorable in that arena. It mostly just amounts to him saying the names of shows. 

"Phony Calls", a parody of TLC's classic "Waterfalls", sees Al once again getting in touch with his inner 12 year by making an ode to crank phone calls. Though maybe ode isn't the right word, as the singer of the song is warning listeners of potential retributive violence they may face as a result of such calls. The premise of the track feels a bit reminiscent of the call-and-response of the early Simpsons bits with Bart calling up Moe's Tavern, something the track acknowledges by playing clips from those scenes in a bridge. It isn't the most original thing in the world, but it's cute. 

The Originals: They Might Be Giants parody "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is a super fun track that I totally didn't get exposed to from when I had a Nostalgia Critic phase at around 12 or so. So just get that out of your head, since I know it was there. It's another one of those Al songs that exist mostly as a stream of nonsensical one-liners, like I mentioned earlier with "My Own Eyes". I'd call this the most successful effort he's had in that regard though. The one-liners are largely memorable ("Soon I was abducted by some aliens from space who kinda looked like Jamie Farr"), and the song itself is just a joy to listen to, with one of the strongest hooks of Al's career.

"Callin' In Sick" is another taste of grunge for the album, this time in the form of a tale of a slacker who can't bring himself to go to work and instead opts to fake sick. I like all the details we get of the ways he plans to waste time at home ("Maybe I'll make a huge color tapestry from my belly button lint"). As a man who took a whole damn to finish the second part of this article, I can sadly relate to this track all too well.

"Since You've Been Gone" is a bit of a palate cleanser, a barbershop quarter track (with Al of course harmonizing entirely with himself) that lasts just under a minute and a half. Just a cute little track with a cute little reveal at the end (I apologize for the fact that if anyone started a drinking game where they took a shot every time I said the words "cute" or "fun" in this article, they'd be in the hospital by now).

Elvis Costello parody "I'm So Sick of You" was the final and hardest cut from my list of favorite Al songs at the bottom of the article. If "One More Minute" and "Melanie" represent the peak of Al's "pretty sounding songs about tortured relationships", this is just right below them. Just a ton of energy to this one, with a damn (is that too close to a swear?) damn darn catchy chorus to boot. 

Hilly Michaels is a name I'm admittedly not all that familiar with, so I'm going to trust other sources that "I Remember Larry" is a parody of his work. I probably should familiarize myself with it though, because this one is a ton of fun (another stomach getting pumped there). It's a pretty clean premise, telling the story of a guy trying to put a positive spin on the actions of his tormentor ("All those brownies he made with the Ex-Lax inside / Oh, Lar', I swear, it was a laugh a minute with you") until he finally snaps. Another incredibly catchy chorus here, showing the renewed sense of songwriting Al had on this album. The originals are pretty much all really well constructed.

We end on another cheerfully dark Christmas tune from Al, "The Night Santa Went Crazy". Hear all about Santa snapping and doing every depraved act from blowing up elves to shooting reindeer with flame flowers. I like that the track even gives a conclusion to things, assuring that Santa will serve time in prison for his crimes ("He'll be out with good behavior in seven hundred more years"). 

 

1. Poodle Hat (2003)

Now, again, there's really not a ton separating these top four albums in my estimation. But, you came here for a ranking, so let me try and do more than toss my hands in the air and go "I guess this one is best". In the process of really buckling down and listening to these top four over and over again to truly assess which is the strongest and most cohesive overall as a work, I switched the top spot around a couple of times. I finally decided in the end this is the Al album I would show to someone if I needed to convince them of his artistry. The genre hopping here is wild, and he truly nails each sound he goes for. As will always help in the case of an artist like this, as well, nostalgia played a bit of a factor here. As I said earlier, Lynwood was the only album I had in full as a kid, but I must have had half if not more of this one in individual songs; certainly all the parodies. Though little did I know at the time that what's even more impressive on this album are the originals. If his previous album was an ideal execution of what he had done before, this album really sees Al pushing himself and his band to new heights they'd never reached before, and it's largely successful in that regard. Some of the tracks on here are about as impressive musically as any comedy song you'll ever hear. 

The Parodies: "Couch Potato" isn't one of Al's most remembered lead singles, in part because Eminem got cold feet after already agreeing to give Al the rights to parody his work and blocked a music video being made from this song. You know, which is fair because that guy never made fun of anyone. While it is shame that makes this the only Al album without a music video (give or take a quick thing he put together for album cut "Bob"), I'm not sure how much a video would have done to push this song to the heights of an "Amish Paradise" or "White & Nerdy". It's not that he didn't pick a worthy song; I'm at the age where "Lose Yourself" is one of the very first songs I can remember being truly inescapable. But the track is essentially an update on Al's "I Can't Watch This" with a more impressive flow. It's not bad at all, but I just wonder how much a video of Al re-enacting clips from "The Real Slim Shady" video and from Kings of Queens would have really done to help a song that just doesn't really have the juice in the way Al's best lead off singles do. So I do quite like this and think it works as an update to a previous fun track, but I totally get why this never really took off.

"Trash Day" is a song I really loved at 9, but now it stands for me as pretty obviously the weakest track on the album. Luckily, on an album this strong, that just means it's only merely okay. The track is a parody of Nelly's "Hot In Herre", about a guy who's too lazy to throw out his trash, to the point that his house is essentially just a dump. It's a bit more basic of an idea than the ones on the rest of the album, and it could go even further into the sort of grotesquerie of the situation, but there's some fun shading here. Changing the "uh, uh" bridge to barfing noises is a pretty inventive gross flip. And there are enough fun lines ("It's so bad, the roaches wearing slippers") to keep it from ever approaching a dud.

Avril Lavigne parody "A Complicated Song" is a deceptively dumb song. Each verse is a little vignette that builds to the most gloriously stupid punchline imaginable. What's impressive is how Al pulls this off three times, essentially burning through three different parody ideas for a song in one go. You also won't believe how many rhymes one man can find for "complicated" without ever saying the word itself.

"Ode to a Superhero" is right back to that Al sub-genre I'm an absolute sucker for, as it sees him telling the story of the then recently released Spider-Man movie to the tune of "Piano Man". It doesn't quite hit the highs of the Star Wars installments, but it's an incredibly fun track, and "sling us a web, you're the Spider-Man" is inspired. 

"eBay" probably should have been the lead single off the album in retrospect. It's certainly more remembered than "Coach Potato", and the Backstreet Boys probably would have been less precious about their image being mocked. Though the album that "I Want It That Way" appears on actually came out a month before Running With Scissors, so I do get the instinct that the song would have been thoroughly old news by the time this album came around 4 years later. But it's a strong parody, and I'm not surprised it currently has 3 times the streams on Spotify as "Potato". Special points especially to the rhyme of "Tchotchkes" with "your watch, please".  

The Originals: "Hardware Store" is just insane. Al's never performed it live, and when you hear the bridge towards the end of the song, you'll understand why. Interestingly enough, it's a song that started out as a style parody of a specific artist before morphing into just a straight up original track, and Al's never revealed who the original source of parody was. I'm glad it ended up not tied to another artist, as the track is a true testament to the musicianship of Al and his band. This is one of the only originals not off Lynwood I had any awareness of as a kid, but I can definitely say this one blew my mind stumbling across it at 9 or so. 

"Party at the Leper Colony" is a country hoe-down about a bunch of people suffering from leprosy, who shake their groove thang until it, well, falls off. I do wonder if this is a premise Al would touch now; it's interesting, between songs like this and the "hermaphrodite" mentions on the last album, to see the more "edgy" humor of the time even affecting an act like Weird Al. Still, this isn't very harmful in its intent, with it mostly just being a vehicle for body horror puns, most of which are fairly amusing ("Pretty soon, she was completely disarmed"). 

"Wanna B Ur Lovr" (I wonder if that's a deliberate misdirect to make people expect a Spice Girls parody) is one of the more specific style style parodies Al's attempted. It's a funk parody, but specifically the very sort of suave-but-sexless style of funk provided by Beck on the album Midnite Vultures. That might sound like a snide description, but it's just accurate. But I love that album nonetheless, so I was primed for this. I think Al picked up on that 'sexless' vibe I was talking about though, as this song is comprised entirely of the cheesiest pick-up lines imaginable. We get some pretty enjoyably lame lines here, including some of the raciest of Al's career ("I wanna be your Krakatoa / Let my lava flow all over you"). The only problem is that, at over 6 minutes, it does drag a bit by the end. Especially considering the album has another epic on the way, I feel like this one could have been trimmed a bit.

If the last track was primed for me, being a Midnight Vultures parody, "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" takes it up a further notch by being a style parody of one of my favorite bands, Ben Folds Five. So we get a nice taste of their signature sound. The bouncy piano, the harmonies, the "ba ba ba ba"s. It's all there. It makes sense those piano keys are sounding nice as well, as Ben Folds himself is the one who laid them down for the track. It's a good concept too, a ballad about a man who can't see the forest for the trees in a major way.  Breaking news of a massive earthquake? He's devastated that he'll miss the end of The Simpsons. Which, they're on, what, season 14 around when this song came out? Eh, he probably didn't miss out on much. (Checks and sees the episode that aired closest to this album coming out is "Moe Baby Blues"). Ah, that one's pretty good actually. He had every right to be upset. 

"Bob" is a really fun little track, riffing on Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by speaking entirely in palindromes. That concept alone is cute enough, but there's an extra layer of commentary that makes the track work even more. It's essentially making the joke that these sentences, that have been rendered meaningless to reach their goal of palindromic structure ("Do geese see God?") make about as much sense as Bob Dylan's (again, said with love) often incredibly arcane lyrics. 

We finish the album with another style parody right up my alley as Al goes all out and does a near 9 minute Frank Zappa homage on "Genius in France". I believe this is another one that doesn't really get performed in concerts, which makes sense as Al's band goes off here. As does Frank's son Dweezil, who plays here, another nod of Al working with the artist (or someone directly connected to the artist) he's parodying. The song has a lot of fun details and texturing, we even get a "great googily moogily!" It's a pretty damn impressive piece of work from Al and his band, and a whopper of a closer. 

Finally, in honor of the number 27, ever present in Al's work, I present to you the 27 Best Weird Al Songs, split into the two groups of the 12 Best Parodies and the 15 Best Originals.  

The Top 12 Best Weird Al Parodies:

1. The Saga Begins (Running With Scissors, 1999)
2. White & Nerdy (Straight Outta Lynwood, 2006)
3. Amish Paradise (Bad Hair Day, 1996)
4. Yoda (Dare to Be Stupid, 1985)
5. Smells Like Nirvana (Off the Deep End, 1992)
6. Another One Rides the Bus (“Weird Al” Yankovic, 1983)
7. I Lost on Jeopardy (“Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, 1984)
8. I Love Rocky Road (“Weird Al” Yankovic, 1983)
9. A Complicated Song (Poodle Hat, 2003)
10. Foil (Mandatory Fun, 2014)
11. It's All About the Pentiums (Running With Scissors, 1999)
12. Tacky (Mandatory Fun, 2014)

The Top 15 Best Weird Al Originals

1. Hardward Store (Poodle Hat, 2003)
2. Dare to Be Stupid (Dare to Be Stupid, 1985)
3. Your Horoscope For Today (Running With Scissors, 1999)
4. Everything You Know Is Wrong (Bad Hair Day, 1996)
5. Pancreas (Straight Outta Lynwood, 2006)
6. UHF (UHF - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff, 1989)
7. Midnight Star (“Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, 1984)
8. Albuquerque (Running With Scissors, 1999)
9. Virus Alert (Straight Outta Lynwood, 2006)
10. Dog Eat Dog (Polka Party!, 1986)
11. Genius In France (Poodle Hat, 2003)
12. I Remember Larry (Bad Hair Day, 1996)
13. Frank’s 2000” TV (Alapalooza, 1993)
14. / 15. (TIE) One More Minute (Dare To Be Stupid, 1985) / Melanie (Even Worse, 1988)