Who is weird al yankovic biography

Yankovic's first album, Weird Al Yankovic, was released in and featured a mix of his Dr. Demento hits and new parodies. One of the new songs was "Ricky," which put lyrics about Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, of the long-runn ing s television series I Love Lucy, to the tune of Toni Basil's hit pop tune "Mickey. I always wanted to grow up to be a Puerto Rican band leader.

The video of the song was also hugely popular, imitating the sets and dance routines of Jackson's video, but making food the subject matter. In Yankovic did another send-up of Jackson, entitling his album Even Worse in response to Jackson's album Bad, and parodying the title song from Jackson's album with the single and video "Fat. Of course, in order to make these parodies, Yankovic had to obtain Jackson's permissio n to use the melodies of his hit songs.

He really seems to appreciate the things I do. Evidently plenty of other songwriters and performers have had a sense of humor over the years as well. The popularity of his videos afforded "Weird Al" the opportunity to branch out a bit, which led to a tel evision special on the cable service Showtime entitled Weird Al Yankovic: The Compleat Al. In he hosted a semi-regular show on MTV called Al TV, which featured his favorite music videos along with sales pitches for "Weird Al" paraphernalia.

Performing parodies has brought Yankovic success, but his considerable abilities go beyond writing new lyrics to other people's tunes. His albums have always included original compositions that feature satirical lyrics about some of the tackier aspe cts of American life. Popeil," "I'm Stuck in the Closet with Vanna White," and "Velvet Elvis" have all poked fun at staples of American popular culture; the title track of his album, Dare to Be Stupid, reflected cluel ess Americans in general.

Describing both his parodies and original songs, Yankovic told Van Matre, "Most of my songs are about food or television or other important aspects of the American pop culture.

The public is used to me doing parodies. When we do an original, they'll come up and say, 'That's great, Al, but what's it a parody of? His reputation as a parodist enabled Yankovic to expand his range with the feature film UHF, a parody of television that he co-wrote and starred in.

Yankovic played a man who inherits a television station with chronic ally low ratings and transforms it by replacing reruns of old sitcoms with game shows like Wheel of Fish and Name That Stain. Published in Musician and Singer. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Profile 4 External. Fans Also Viewed.

More from Musician More posts in Musician ». Kris Wu. Kevin Jonas. Bryan Adams. Yankovic's work depends largely on the satirizing of popular culture, including television, movies, food, popular music, and sometimes issues in contemporary news. Although many of his songs are parodies of contemporary radio hits, it is rare that the song's primary topic is the lampooning of that artist. Yankovic's humor lies more in creating unexpected incongruity between an artist's image and the topic of the song, contrasting the style of the song with its content, or in pointing out trends or works which have become pop culture cliches.

One major victim of this seems to be Bob Rivers, but so many such wrongly attributed tracks exist that several fans have set up websites attempting to list such tracks along with their real artists.

It has been pointed out that this not only deprives the real artists involved of credit for their creations, but sometimes associates Al's name with types of music he would never produce and would not want to be known for. On April 9, , Al's parents, Nick Louis Yankovic, 86, and Mary, 81, were found dead in their Fallbrook, California home, apparently the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The night after their bodies were found, Al went on with his concert in Mankato, Minnesota, saying that since his music had helped many of his fans through tough times, maybe it would work for him as well. Albums Since Al got a record contract in , he has released many albums and parodies. Originals such as "Melanie" and "Albuquerque" are favorites of many of his fans.

Peter and the Wolf - "This warped classical children's record featuring narration and poems written by "Weird Al" Yankovic and music arranged, composed and performed by synthesizer whiz Wendy Carlos" - Weirdal.

VH1 produced a Behind the Music episode on Al. Al is so clean-cut that the producers couldn't find any of the typical angst-laced problems that make many rock stars' stories compelling as Al noted in an interview with BTM , so their angle was on Al's life as a bachelor and what they presumed was his loneliness.