[Image ID: Screencap from unspecified website in dark mode. Text reads:
“After that that stupid thing from Bezos and Musk about how a trillion humans would mean a thousand Mozarts, it got me thinking.
We clearly must have Mozarts today, and at least a couple of them probably got the same upbringing he did to nurture their skill and talent, and we would therefore have:
a musician of significant talent, dedication and skill,
who can write music across a bunch of different contemporary genres,
who explicitly draws from the work of other musicians to build their style, and
who is willing to do the musical equivalent of shitposting and wear fancy outfits while doing it.
I can only conclude that the modern-day Mozart is Weird Al Yankovic.
I will not be taking questions.”
Followed by: a portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a photograph of Weird Al Yankovic, in similar ¾ poses with similar eyebrow-raised and smiling expressions. End ID.]
i think a lot of people who have never done music do not understand how absolutely implausible weird al’s skill level is. you can say “so many musicians can do at least one of his songs, obviously”, and yes, they can, but they couldn’t do all of them. you have people who studied ten or twenty years to be able to do something genuinely incredible, and they’ve specialized and focused and developed the ability to produce a particular kind of thing, and they do it really well, and then this guy comes along and says “welp, time for a new album”, picks ten of them, and duplicates their shtick well enough to be clearly recognizable.
this man produced a piece of music which an experienced listener can hear and say “oh, that’s Frank Zappa”. how? not even Frank Zappa sounds like Frank Zappa!
Is weird Al doing different shit now? Bc if he was writing pastiches this would be true, but all I’m really familiar with is the stuff where he just rewrites the lyrics to an existing song, or does a polka cover of it.
Weird Al’s “style parodies”, or original compositions explicitly in the style of a particular artist or band, are approximately as numerous as his actual song parodies. Generally the Regular Parodies get all the attention, they’re the big money spinners, but his style parodies are both numerous and legendary.
Dare to Be Stupid, the title track off the album of the same name, is probably the big one that people would know - a more Devo song than actual Devo, and that’s according to Devo themselves.
An incomplete list of other ones that rule, actually, are:
Germs (Nine Inch Nails)
I’ll Sue Ya (Rage Against The Machine)
Pancreas (The Beach Boys)
Craiglist (The Doors)
My Own Eyes (Foo Fighters)
Bob (Bob Dylan)
Everything You Know Is Wrong (They Might Be Giants)
Trigger Happy (The Beach Boys again but from a different era)
The discography of American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor and parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic consists of fourteen studio albums, two soundtrack albums, nine compilation albums, eleven video albums, two extended plays, two box sets, forty-six singles and fifty-four music videos. Since the debut of his first comedy song in 1976, he has sold more than 12 million albums—more than any other comedy act in history—recorded more than 150 parody and original songs, and performed more than 1,000 live shows
He has done so, so much more than just the dozen or so parody songs that everyone knows.
