Inspiration: Weird Al Yankovic (Text Version)

Hey Everybody! Somewhere in 1985, I listened to a tape recording that my brother made of the Dr. Demento Show. For those who don’t know, Dr. Demento is a radio personality known for his promotion of novelty songs, comedy albums, and really all things strange and unusual. That recording introduced me to a dozen or so comedy legends, but none of them were more impactful on my life than Weird Al Yankovic.

I think the first cassette I ever owned was Weird Al’s Even Worse album, then I swung back and got Weird Al in 3D, and I continued to purchase his albums through high school and into college. Some of my favorites include Alapalooza, Bad Hair Day and Running with Scissors. Now most people know Weird Al from his parody songs, but many don’t realize just how prolific and proficient an artist he actually is. He’s recorded over 150 songs, done over 1000 live performances, has 5 Grammys to his name. He also has multiple gold and platinum albums, and in 2014, his album Mandatory Fun went to number 1 on the Billboard Charts. To put that into perspective, it had been about 50 years since that happened. The last time a comedy album went to number one on the charts was Allen Sherman’s My Son, The Nut in 1963.

Now let’s jump into what we can learn from Weird Al and how he conducts his business. The first thing I want to talk about is RESPECT, and especially respect for your fellow artist. Weird al makes it a point to obtain the permission of the original artist of every song that he parodies. Legally he doesn’t have to do that, but in the interest of engendering good will in the industry, as well as respecting the work of the original artist, he makes that a priority. That respect has been reciprocal. He has many fans in the professional music industry, and many consider it a badge of honor to be parodied by him. The idea being that “you haven’t really made it in this industry until you’ve been parodied by Weird Al.”

The next thing I want to talk about is CONFIDENCE. In 1976 Dr. Demento went and spoke at a school in Lynwood, and a 16-year-old Al Yankovic walked up to him and handed him a cassette tape that he had recorded on a “crappy little recorder” of some songs. Dr. Demento was so impressed that he actually put one of them on the air. Now I believe the song was "Belvedere Cruisin’" and it certainly wasn’t the best thing Weird Al has ever written and the recording quality was questionable, but Weird Al believed in it and himself enough to walk up to a professional who might actually be able to do something with the song. We can all fall prey to perfectionism in this world of entertainment and this world of creating. It does nothing but hold us back! The lesson here for me is to be fearless. We have to believe that what we are doing is good and that other people might actually enjoy it too.

The last thing I want to talk about is rather personal for me and it’s hard to put into words. Now I could call it “just be yourself,” but I’d rather call it EMBRACE YOUR INNER WEIRDO. I discovered Weird Al about the time I was going into junior high and it was not always a pleasant time in my life. By most accounts I was a weird, nerdy kid and I had a lot of heartache from not feeling like I fit in. When I discovered Weird Al and heard his music, it was the first time I had the thought that maybe I didn’t have to fit in. First time it crossed my mind that maybe I could just be my weird self and that was ok.

“Here’s this weird guy, he seems to be successful and happy. If he can do it, why not me?”

So, I want to thank Weird Al for that, because it helped me be who I was and not have so much anxiety that it mattered to other people, because truthfully it probably didn’t. We’re all weirdos. We all have something. There are no cool kids. Maybe if we all realize that everybody is worried about fitting in and everybody is worried about being the odd man out, then maybe we could all stop worrying about it so much.

So I want to thank you all for hanging out with me and talking about Weird Al. I think I’m going to go have a Twinkie-Wiener sandwich and listen to some Polka music. Let me know in the comments what you think you’re favorite Weird Al song is. I’ll see you later.

[You can watch the video version of this article here!]