rosslynpaladin:

villainous-queer:

radwolf76:

icarus-suraki:

lew-basnight:

The thing re Weird Al that I think is worth recognizing is illustrated by the Spike Jones Jr quote “One of the things that people don’t realize about Dad’s kind of music is, when you replace a C-sharp with a gunshot, it has to be a C-sharp gunshot or it sounds awful.“ It’s like really good parody has to do it all backwards and in heels, and Weird Al gets in there and counts the syllables and pours over the phrasing and word choices so that it all sounds precisely like the original, and then re-records the song, acknowledging the tiniest details of the recording, and also makes it a highly detailed spoof of an adjacent and absurdly unrelated piece of popular culture. I think really good parody has a love for the source materiel that’s impossible to fake. It takes real musicianship (or craft) to do and it usually gets tossed aside as “novelty” recording.

You gotta be fuckin’ good if you want to fuck it up.

Al will also try to reuse the original music video sets if they’re available, and bring back the same background actors.

I assure you, in the music industry, Weird Al is highly respected. If he makes a parody of your song it’s acknowledged that it means you have ‘made it’ as an artist. Rappers have commented on how ‘scary good’ at rapping he is. His range is right up there with Danny Elfman in terms of how incredibly huge it is. Accordion players have commented that he’s insane on the accordion, and does it while jumping around on stage, I may add. He learns from his mistakes and to top it all off he’s a really kind man (I’ve met him).

He has a level of hard earned skill we may aspire toward