It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 whole years since “Weird Al” Yankovic released Mandatory Fun. Al’s 14th full-length studio album made history at that time, becoming the very first comedy LP to ever debut in the top spot of the Billboard 200. And then… Yankovic never released a full-length studio album ever again.
“It was actually a wonderful mic-drop to be able to have my last album debut at No. 1,” says Yankovic, who’s celebrating Mandatory Fun‘s anniversary this week with “Polkamania!,” a medley of the past decade’s biggest pop hits.
Of course, Yankovic has hardly faded away or entered retirement — in fact, after his Mandatory Fun chart milestone, his career has only gone from strength to strength. He has showcased his often-underrated original material on two Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tours and one orchestral tour; his brilliant satirical biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, won Emmy, Producer Guild, and Critics’ Choice awards; and he has even received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
It seems that an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would be the next logical honor for the 12 million-selling five-time Grammy-winner, whose career has actually outlasted many of the Hall inductees whose work he has parodied. He points out that no comedians have ever entered the Hall, so his induction would be another historic first.
“I suppose there’s a chance,” Yankovic shrugs with his typical affable modesty. “I know I’m sort of a fan favorite and there’ve been petitions going around. I think last time I checked, they have a touchscreen at the museum where fans can say, ‘Who do you think should get into the Rock Hall?’ And I’m consistently around No. 10, I think. So, it’s not out of the question. I will say I’m not losing any sleep over it. It’s nice to have an accolade like that, and I would be, of course, very honored if that ever happened. But at the same time, it’s one of those things where I’m also fine if that never happens. My life goes on.
“I mean, I’m not like a traditional rock act like Dolly Parton!” Yankovic adds with a chuckle. “Um, that’s probably a bad example. My point being that their definition of ‘rock’ is pretty fuzzy at this point, so I think it wouldn’t be totally out of the question for them to consider me. But that’s their call.”
To be fair, Al did record Pixies, Foo Fighters, Southern Culture on the Skids, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens parodies for Mandatory Fun, so he can’t say he doesn’t rock. But then he humbly gasps, “Wait, [the Pixies are] not in the Hall yet? Oh, my goodness. Well, they should definitely be in the Hall way before me.”
Interestingly, those above-mentioned parodies weren’t tweaked covers of existing hits, but original “In the Style Of” compositions. Yankovic actually cites his Cat Stevens homage, the epic, nine-minute “Jackson Park Express,” as one of his favorite originals of all time. Unsurprisingly, he says this sort of parody is much more difficult to pull off. But it’s also seemingly more rewarding, and actually a bigger honor for the artist being spoofed.
“With the pastiches, there’s a lot more work involved. It’s more of a labor of love, because I try to familiarize myself with an artist’s entire body of work and study every song and make notes and try to figure out what are that artist’s idiosyncrasies. What are the little stylistic things that make that artist recognizable as that artist? And then I take all those notes and I hopefully have a good idea for the song and I put it all together. Sometimes I’ll spend months working on one song. I think when I did [2002’s] ‘Genius in France,’ my Frank Zappa pastiche, that literally took several months to write and arrange.”
Yankovic says there’s no artist, no matter how legendary, that he considers off-limits or untouchable when comes to any sort of spoof. “There’s a few that I haven’t gotten around to, but not because I revere them so much that I think they’re beyond parody. I think that anybody is fair game. … It’s pretty rare if and when I go for the jugular; it is mostly just all done in good fun. And even when it’s snarky like with Nirvana or Lady Gaga, it’s still all done in good fun. My famous line is it is more of a poke on the ribs than a kick in the butt.”
That being said, Yankovic says that “there are certain situations, certain songs, that probably would be tasteless to do parodies of,” and he does admit that certain songs in his back catalog feature humor that doesn’t quite fly today. “I don’t want to give specific examples, but certainly in the ‘80s and ‘90s there was some language which was apparently OK at the time and is not so OK in present day,” he explains. “And there’ve been a couple of times when I’d be playing one of those songs in concert and I would stop the song dead in the middle and say, ‘I’m sorry about using that word. When I wrote the song in the ‘90s, it had a different connotation.’ That kind of thing. I have to look at my songs as products of their age, and some of them didn’t age as well as others.”
Yankovic says he does still “wrestle” with “the whole thing of ‘can you really separate the artist from the art?’” – for instance, this writer’s past favorite Al song parody, “Trapped in the Drive-Thru,” based on the disgraced R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet,” is unlikely to ever be played in concert again. But he does note that his Michael Jackson parody “Eat It,” which he stopped performing live for a while after the explosive Jackson exposé Leaving Neverland docuseries came out, “figured very heavily in the [Weird] biopic. … You just kind of have to gauge how the public feels at any particular time. … I’m not going to discuss what is or isn’t on the setlist for the next tour, but I would say that everything’s on the table.”
One Mandatory Fun track that actually seems more relevant than ever, and would probably go over well in concert now, is a spoof of Lorde’s “Royals,” titled “Foil,” which pokes fun at tin-hatted conspiracy theorists. But, just like some clueless casual fans thought Weird was 100 percent non-fiction, some people took “Foil” a bit too seriously.
“I didn’t do it to put out some very heavy social commentary. … Certainly, I have my own political opinions, but I don’t think anybody really needs to know what ‘Weird’ Al’s hot take on anything is! I’m here to just supply an escape for people that want to get away from hearing about politics all the time,” Yankovic says. “But it’s been amusing to me that some people think I’m being ironic with that song and some people think I’m being serious: ‘Is Al really part of the Illuminati?’ Or, ‘Is he telling secrets at a school?’ ‘Is he drinking the adrenochrome?’”
Switching subjects, there’s another Al-centric petition that regularly circulates: To get the comic legend to play the Super Bowl half-time show. Yankovic has previously envisioned a half-time show that would incorporate “duets with the artists that I’ve lampooned over the years” — before Coolio’s death in 2022, Al’s dream Super Bowl spectacle even included “thousands of dancing Amish people” and “Coolio coming in on wires” during “Amish Paradise” — and he while still doesn’t think the NFL would ever seriously consider him, if there’s anyone could unite this politically fragmented nation, it’s him. No one doesn’t like “Weird” Al Yankovic.
“Aw, thanks, that’s nice to hear,” Yankovic says.
In the meantime, Miley Cyrus is currently the frontrunner to headline next year’s Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. And Yankovic does cover Cyrus’s Grammy-winning “Flowers” (along with songs by Adele, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Cardi B, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, and Lil Nas X) on “Polkamania!” So, would Al at least consider doing a cameo with Miley during her hypothetical half-time? “I suppose so, sure. I mean, if Miley Cyrus really needs accordion backup, I suppose I could fill that job,” he laughs.
“Polkamania!” is Yankovic’s first polka medley since 2018 and first single since the original Weird movie theme “Now You Know,” but — unlike Mötley Crüe, who decided to resume making music after the success of their TV biopic The Dirt — Yankovic isn’t interested in recording full albums again. That’s a decision he made actually before Mandatory Fun’s release, and he still hasn’t changed his mind.
“I thought [in 2014], ‘OK, this is the last album on my contract after this. I don’t want to be beholden to anybody.’ I’d been under the same record contract for 32 years — it was a 14-album deal, and Mandatory Fun was the last album. I mean, that was maybe part of the reason for the title!” Al explains. “I just thought, ‘OK, this is it. I’m not retiring, but I don’t think I want to be on a label after this. I don’t want to have to ask permission to do things. I don’t want to owe anybody anything.’ I figured, ‘I’ll just release things on my own terms after this.’ … The thought of doing a full album doesn’t excite me anymore. … I think that the best thing for me to do is just to release material whenever I think of it, whenever I feel like it, and not have to wait around.”
“Weird Al” Yankovic in 2024 (photo: Sam Jones)
As Al takes stock of his career with a celebration of his final studio album, an upcoming greatest-hits tour, a semi-accurate but award-winning biopic, and semi-serious Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Super Bowl speculation, the obvious final question must be asked: When he started off in Lynwood, just a boy and his accordion, did he think he would still be doing this almost a half-century later?
“No, obviously not!” he chucklingly exclaims. “I was doing it for fun, just to amuse myself and my friends, and I thought it’d be cool to get some airplay on the radio through The Dr. Demento Show. Maybe I had rock-star fantasies, but I never really thought that I was going to have a career in show business. I always thought, ‘OK, I’m a good student and I study hard and I work hard, and I’m going to grow up and be an adult and have a real job. And when I was 12 years old, I said, ‘OK, well, I’m going to be an architect.’
“I went to school, got my degree, and by the time I graduated from college, I was like, ‘I don’t think I want to be an adult. I think I’d rather give this comedy musician thing a shot first and see if that pans out.”
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarify. Listen to audio of Al’s full conversation in the video at the top of this article!
