Exclusive: Weird Al Yankovic Interview 0
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Weird Al, but were too apathetic to look up on Wikipedia!
 By Jeremy Azevedo |
If there was any one person that I’ve always wanted to interview, it’d probably be… Hulk Hogan! But since Hulk wasn’t available, my next pick would have to be Weird Al Yankovic. (J/K, Al!) Weird Al was one of my earliest comedy influences, and is one of very few people (if any) that has managed to make a life-long career out of musical comedy. |
And so it was with great pleasure that I had the opportunity to talk with Weird Al about everything from his recent “Essential Al” collection and James Blunt being named “one-hit wonder of the decade”, to the number 27 and whether or not Kanye West is a “soft target”. We even spoke briefly about whether or not he’d ever make anther movie like the cult classic “UHF”. (Spoiler: Not only would he, but maybe he already is?) Seriously, if there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to know about Weird Al, we probably cover it in this interview!
Are the songs on the “Internet Leaks” EP indicative of a new distribution model for your more time-sensitive parody songs?
Weird Al: Well, its kind of an experiment, you know? I haven’t really, until recently, taken advantage of the power of the Internet; at least in terms of being able to be more topical. My material, a lot of it, is timely and topical. And it would behoove of me to get it to the marketplace in a timely manner. And certainly the infrastructure exists in portals like iTunes to do that. I just wanted to see, to prove to myself that I could do that. When I did my T.I. parody, whenever it was, last October 2008, I was able to get my parody on and out while the T.I. song was still #1 on the charts. Which was something that I was never able to accomplish under the old model of, you know, write it and record it and then wait around several months until they actually could physically manufacture albums on discs. So its just something I’m playing around with. And as far as the originals this last summer, I had recorded them and I figured, you know, why just let them sit around, gathering dust on a hard drive for another year while I finish the album? Why not just get it out there and let people enjoy it now, and then it’ll be on a CD some time in the future.
For all the “Polkamaniacs” out there…
Plus then you can sell it twice, too.
Weird Al: Well, yeah.
Can you tell us anything about the next album that you’re working on?
Weird Al: Well, not a lot. I mean, 5/12ths of it is already out, and as far as the rest of it, I really tend not give away any secrets or surprises. So it’s not any radical departure from anything I’ve done in the past. It’s more parodies and originals and the kind of humor that you’d expect from a guy like me.
Can we expect a polka medley, then, maybe a song about food, and a song about television?
Weird Al: Ha ha! Well a polka medley almost definitely, for sure. As far as food and television, I try to… I haven’t stopped entirely writing songs about food, but I always think twice before doing it just because I’ve got so many already in my catalogue. It’s sort of like a running joke, so I tryyyyyyyyy not to write songs about food, but I cant promise that I wont.
Tell us about “The Essential Weird Al”. What prompted you to release a greatest hits compilation and how did you choose the songs for it?
Weird Al: I was approached by Sony Legacy to do the collection, and I thought it was a good idea… Number one, because I hadn’t had any hits compilations for about 15 years or so and I thought, you know, it was about time. For the longest time I had sort of a knee-jerk reaction against greatest hits collections because my old label, Scotty Brothers, sort of released one every time they were having a bad financial quarter. Like, “Oh, were having a tough time balancing the books, lets put out another Weird Al compilation.”
Yeah, I feel like there was a period of time were there were two or three comps that came one after the other…
Weird Al: Yeah, it was a little silly. And at that point, I just really had a bad taste in my mouth for the whole thing. But you know, a lot of time has gone by and it just felt like it was a good time for it. My previous box set had gone out of print and there wasn’t any kind of collection of, you know, a definitive sort of “greatest hits” collection out in the market and I thought, well, this really does kinda make sense. And the people at Legacy just couldn’t have been nicer. They let me pick all the songs; they let me jam-pack the CDs, which is something that that I normally cant do, because I have a royalty ceiling. I usually cant put more than 12 songs on the album because otherwise, it eats into the profits and, you know… But they said, “go ahead and fill up the CDs as much as you can and we’ll take care of it”. So I was able to pick what I thought were, you know, 2 ½ hours of my best material over my career. There are obviously some omissions… It was a tough decision because I left off some fairly obvious things like “My Bologna”. Which historically is very important to my career, but I just felt like it wasn’t… If you look at it really critically, it really isn’t, like, one of my best songs, you know? Read the rest of this entry →
