10 years ago This week, Weird Al Yankovic Mandatory fun It became the first comedy album to top the Billboard albums chart since Alan Sherman's My son is a walnut In August 1963. The years following this victory were a busy time for Yankovic, marked by multiple world tours, and a period as the band's leader in Comedy Bang! Bang!recording “The Hamilton Polka”, and releasing Stranger: The Yankovic Story, A brilliantly twisted biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe that has won numerous awards, including an Emmy for Best Television Movie.
One thing he didn’t do was give any contemporary pop songs the “Weird Al” treatment. That finally changed today with the release of “Polkamania!”, a brand-new polka mix that makes up for lost time by incorporating hits from the past decade by Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Adele, Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X and more.
“There are so many songs that I probably should have tried over the last 10 years,” Yankovic says. rolling stone Via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “For some reason, I let them go by the wayside. This is my chance to right my past wrongs and do at least a lot of those songs in polka fashion.”
Polka sets are a tradition of “Weird Al” dating back to his 1984 album “Weird Al Yankovic” in 3Dcramming parts of 13 songs—including “My Generation,” “Hey Jude” and “Every Breath You Take”—into a four-minute, 20-second polka. They’ve appeared on every album since, but Yankovic turned to other pursuits after the release of Mandatory fun In 2014.
Creating “Polkamania!” required Yankovic to reacquaint himself with the Top 40. “Over the last 10 years, my radar has not been as strong as it used to be when it comes to pop singles,” he says. “I don’t blindly follow the charts like I did before 2014. So I figured that any song I was still familiar with, as an old man, had to be a big hit. So I went down to a list of all the No. 1 songs.” painting “Songs of the past ten years, and I picked twelve songs that I thought were the most memorable.”
The 1994 Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music was a turning point in music history, ruling that parody songs were legal under the fair use doctrine, meaning that Yankovic technically didn’t have to ask permission from artists before recording their music. But he always did it anyway to maintain good relations and avoid embarrassing public spats.
But polka compilations are a little different. “Unless you get specific permission, you have to pay full publishing price for every song on the compilation,” Yankovic says. “If I don’t get a deal from everyone, that means I lose a lot of money every time someone buys a copy.” For compilations to be viable, artists have to agree to take a smaller percentage of royalties proportionate to whatever percentage of their songs are on the compilation. Publishers are likely to reject such a request, so Yankovic and his manager Jay Levy go directly to the artists. “They think it’s cool, and they like the idea of being involved in a weird polka compilation,” Yankovic says.
Taylor Swift had no objections when she turned her song “You Belong With Me” into TMZ in 2011. the end of the worldShe had no problem with “Shake It Off” appearing on the new polka collection. “Luckily, she has a great sense of humor,” Yankovic says. “Her management was so great, and I was so happy about that. Once Taylor Swift said yes, I was like, ‘OK, we have a collection now.’”
From the start, he knew Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s 2020 hit “WAP” had to be part of the song. The Rated G artist has a history of taking bold songs like “Closer,” “The Humpty Dance” and “I Touch Myself” and finding clever ways to make them kid-friendly. “I remember being on a late-night walk by myself and just thinking, ‘How am I going to do this in a polka style and make it family-friendly?’” Yankovic says. “Then I thought about the sound effects.” [like a cat’s meow in place of the word “pussy”]“And I said, 'Well, this will work.'”
The only problem was getting Cardi B to agree. When he didn't get a response from the initial outreach, he turned to his friend Jamie Lee Curtis, who knows Offset, Cardi B's husband. “Jamie Lee Curtis and I made a video together,” Yankovic says. “We said, 'We'd love to have your song in a polka mix,' and we sent it to our friend.” [Offset] “Then he reached out to someone else, and they were able to solve the problem. But I had to make a special video with Jamie Lee Curtis to get their attention.”
The only artist who couldn’t be reached was SZA. “We wanted to include ‘Kill Bill’ because we thought it would be really funny as a polka, and we didn’t get a ‘no,’ but we didn’t get a response,” Yankovic says. “It was so weird. I know her agent. We went through so many avenues just to get an answer from her, and we couldn’t get a single yes or no.” (On the other hand, getting his girlfriend Lin-Manuel Miranda to sign on for “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” took just a text message.)
Once the song was finished — which also features parts of Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito,” Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” — Yankovic turned to a cast of animation stars and filmmakers to create the video. Collaborators include Bill Plympton, Liam Lynch, Garrett Heather, British animator Cyriac, and A24’s Hazbin Hotel Creative Vivian Medrano.
The release of “Polkamania!” is likely to raise hopes in the Weird Al fan community that a full-fledged parody song could emerge in the near future. Although he first teased the possibility of a one-off parody back in 2014, he says his opinion has changed dramatically on the matter.
“I’ve reached a point in my life where I just feel like I want to try new things,” he says. “I mean, I’ve been doing the same formula for four decades, and I want to do more feature films and TV, and I love voice acting. I want to keep doing music, and I still love touring, of course. But just doing a new parody… I don’t know. I’m not ruling it out, but it’s not my focus anymore.”
Yanukovych has been out of the way since his second term. A ridiculous and ill-considered ego trip.which centered around deep cuts and non-ironic songs from his previous catalog, and ended in March 2023. It was preceded by Restrictions Symphony Tour. He was very tight-lipped when asked about his future touring plans, but said he would be back on the road again at some point.
“There’s a lot of talk about this, and unless something unexpected happens, it will happen in the future,” he says. “But I can’t confirm the exact date yet.” Will there be a specific theme to this round, like the previous two? “It’s a fairly specific theme,” he says.
He hasn’t performed his 1988 Michael Jackson parody “Fat” since 2016, even though it’s been a staple of every tour up until that point. For a variety of reasons, he’s not sure he’ll ever do it again. “On one tour in particular, those documentaries had just come out and people were kind of upset about it, and I didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable,” he says. “But now it feels a little old-fashioned in a lot of ways, and I’ve done it 1,000 times on stage.”
“I don’t know,” he continues. “It’s a crowd favorite. I don’t personally think it’s offensive because I think it’s about body positivity. I know a lot of people are going to say it’s inappropriate at this point, and it’s very difficult to wear that outfit on stage. It probably won’t be on the setlist for the upcoming tour, but I wouldn’t rule it out completely at some point in the future.”
He is also not willing to rule out follow-up. Stranger: The Yankovic Story. The 2022 film was a success beyond all expectations, opening doors to Hollywood that had been closed to it since then. ultra high frequency frequencies “I joke that I release a film every 33 years, as if it were a chore,” he says. “But I like to think that now that I have a film that’s getting good reviews and seems to be popular and winning awards, it’s opened some doors for me. I can’t really talk about what’s in development, but we’re going to try to make more feature films.”
Spoiler alert: Radcliffe's character “Weird Al” died in a hail of bullets at the 1985 Grammy Awards at the end of the ceremony. Stranger: The Yankovic StoryBut that doesn't mean a sequel is out of the question. “I can't confirm or deny it, but this could be the first biopic ever to have a sequel. Maybe it's a zombie movie. Who knows?” he says.
A Broadway musical is also a possibility. “We’re thinking about it. We’re in talks. I actually got my Broadway debut earlier this year as one of the producers of a Broadway musical,” he says. Gutenberg! The Musical! “That was so much fun.”
Yankovic says fulfilling the terms of his record deal in 2014 has given him a great sense of freedom. “It’s nice not to owe anybody anything or have any responsibility for it,” he says. “And it’s nice not to have to ask permission, because when I was under contract or with a record label, if someone said, ‘Hey, do you want to plan my album?’ or ‘Hey, do you want to do this with me?’ I’d say, ‘Well, let me ask my record label first.’ Now I can do whatever I want.”
