I hated this album when it first came out. Hated hated hated. Al, it took your 4 years to get this album out (this might have been a new record?), and THIS is what you gave us? Most of the parodies were of songs I couldn’t stand, and they weren’t even funny. It even took a while for some of the originals to grow on me. But, boy did they. With the exception of Luvr (which is way overplayed and goes on for way too long), this album has some of the best originals ever. The parodies all still suck though.
The media made an attempt to make Eminem vs Al be Coolio Part 2. When Eminen granted permission for Al to do a parody of Lose Yourself, he requested that it not be a single because he didn’t want it to be in the spotlight. Strangely, rather than do a video for Trash Day instead (which had 100% support from Nelly, who even donated costumes and props for the live version), he did one for Bob (and didn’t do any more videos for this album) and released eBay (which was already terribly dated) as the radio single. It still won the Best Comedy Grammy, making it Al’s third win.
A little trivia: almost every single TV show mentioned in Couch Potato is no longer on the air (and many of the people mentioned in the song are now DEAD). It didn’t stay in the live setlist for very long…
= Last Resort, Chop Suey, Get Free, Hate To Say I Told You So, Fell In Love With a Girl, Last Night, Down With The Sickness, Renegades of Funk, My Way Or the Highway, I’m On The Outside, Bawitaba, Youth of the Nation, The Real Slim Shady
I had to vote for Hardware Store - my very favorite Weird Al original song! The music is top notch, the lyrics are awesome … " …matching salt and pepper shakers!"
So hard to choose between “Hardware Store” and “Genius in France”.
“Genius in France” is absolutely brilliant, but I have more personal affection for “Hardware Store”. The building list leading to the last chorus blows my mind.
“Bob” was a very close third.
“Why Does This Always Happen to Me” is fourth, although not as close on “Bob”'s heels as “Bob” is on the heels of “Genius in France”.
Might be my least favorite album for parodies (“Smells Like Nirvana” is the only parody that saves Off the Deep End from being a tie for least favorite album for parodies), but Poodle Hat has the strongest originals of Al’s career.
“Hardware Store” and “Genius in France” are the songs I play for people who don’t listen to Al but believe they know enough about him to declare him a “hack” and “not a real musician”. These two songs leave the critics with their jaws dropped.
Yeah, I played Bob for my sixth graders the other day, and then my Facebook status over the weekend was one of my favorite palindromes (Nurse, I spy gypsies! Run!) that turned into a back and forth of about 20 of them (sprinkled with a few “What the hell are you talking about?”) from the song.
I also have played Hardward Store to students when discussing tools. Man, that speed singing toward the end; I can’t even READ that fast. I have to wonder if that song is performable live. I’ve never seen him do it.
Once, during a class party (back when we could do those things a bit more often), I played this entire album. The kids loved Hardware Store, A Complicated Song (come on–a constipation joke! Right up a middle schooler’s alley!), and Ode to a Superhero. My favorite kid reaction was to the lyric, “…it seems she prefers guys who can kiss upside down in the rain.” Student: “OH! I *remember *that part!” Um…yeahhhhh, I think we ALL do. Ah, junior highers. They are the masters of stating the obvious. Loudly.
I do so love this album.
That said, I think Wanna Be Your Luvr is my least favorite Weird Al song ever, yet he performs that one at almost every concert. Boo.
Hardware Store or Genius in France. It really comes down to those two.
Gotta go with Hardware Store, though. It’s fast, fun, and technically impressive. I like Genius in France, but it took a while to grow on me; the meandering style changes bugged the crap out of me at first.
This album also has possibly the best polka, competing with Alternative Polka.
I love the whole album. Trash Day is probably the weakest, but I like it anyway. I settled on ‘Why Does This Always Happen To Me’ - not because it’s as musically impressive as some of the other originals, but it’s just funny.
And watching Al perform ‘I Wanna Be Ur Lovr’ live is one of the most hysterical things ever.
I picked “Hardware Store” for musical genius, but “Why Does This Always Happen to Me” made me laugh out loud – I mean I really cracked up – the first time I heard it.
And I said, "God, please answer me one question:
Why’d they have to interrupt The Simpsons* just for this?*
When that massive earthquake in Chile occurred last year, I couldn’t stop singing that song (with slightly altered lyrics), and would scream “why’d they have to interrupt the Simpsons just for this???” everytime I saw news about it on TV. That god I don’t believe in hell (or god), because they’d have a spot lined up for me there.
I voted for Genius in France because I thought it was the funniest.
I didn’t like any of the parodies on this album, except “Ode to a Superhero,” but I really liked four of the originals/pastiches (“Party,” “Wanna,” “Bob,” and “Genius”).
“Bob”, but only the music video version. While some of those palindromes are old stand-bys, I have to imagine that he came up with a great number of them himself, something in itself that’s not particularly easy. Then, he manages to get them to fit in terms of both rhyme and (for the most part) meter. About the only thing he could have done better is have the song make semantic sense, but when dealing with palindromes you have to sacrifice something.
The video is absolutely needed though, and ties in very well with the song’s origin. Without the video, I can’t imagine most people even beginning to fathom what the hell is going on in the song.
I’ve had the album since the day it came out, but only saw the video a couple weeks ago when someone linked to it. Never had any problem fathoming the song.