So I was wrong. In response to a request from Prince’s management that Weird Al not make eye contact with Prince, Al sent a request to Prince’s management demanding that Prince not make eye contact with him.
Meanwhile, Night Ranger, who got the memo but didn’t GAF, trolled The Purple One when presenting him with the Album of the Year Award.
No, I did not. They are not all nerdy, and young nerds are not in their number. It’s the middle Aged part that seem to matter most.
I think you’re horribly out of touch with what most fourth graders are listening to these days. It ain’t Weird Al.
That is FANTASTIC! Until this moment, for decades, I thought Night Ranger was insipid and awful. Starting now and forever, I am a devoted fan. For real.
They are, but good for them anyway. 
See also the first two lines of “Handy”:
First things first, I’m a craftsman,
Remodeling’s my only passion…
I’m probably more in touch with what fourth graders are listening to than most here. You’re correct that most aren’t listening to Weird Al; but he absolutely has a fan base among kids. Here’s an old thread on good Weird Al for a kid, and a bit of Googling is finding people reporting about the all-ages, multigenerational aspect of his concerts.
Al’s version is actually titled (This Song’s Just) Six Words Long. Using the contraction does make the title six words long.
Here’s some concert footage from Madison Square Garden last year, geared up to the point where he’s walking through the crowd. It’s interesting to see the crowd: while middle-age white dudes are disproportionately represented, they by no means make up the entirety of the crowd. There are plenty of women, plenty of kids, and a few people of color.
They were/are. BUT, a girl I was dating in high school had their record, and one day she put it on and we listened to it while we, uh … did that thing that teenagers do (or did, in the 80s; I have no idea what’s going on today).
I’ve always been curious about the eye contact thing, because Prince isn’t the only celebrity I’ve heard this about. It’s so weird.
I’m going by what my own fairly-recently-4th grader kid and her friends listen to.
Not disputing that. It was the idea of his ubiquity that I was challenging.
Fair enough! It’s true that when I introduce the idea of parody by asking who knows Weird Al, somewhere between a third and a half of students raise their hands–and this is among the nerdier cohort of kids. I’m getting ready to ask the question of a new group in about 15 minutes and will report back.
Some celebrities…and every damned person in NYC.
Sadly, you were challenging something nobody said. Dr.Winston_OBoogie said:
I won’t make the obvious joke about the good Doctor’s statement… 
I was watching this cool video about the structure of rap music, and it seems really hard, you guys. Then I thought, Al had to write some crazy bars for some of the songs he parodied. I think many people think to write a rap you just write down some lyrics and rap them, but it’s a lot more complex than that, and I’m impressed he figured out how to do it for White & Nerdy and All About the Pentiums.
I actually think something more along the lines of what was mentioned in Jurassic Park, Ode to a Superhero, and The Saga Begins. Even if they don’t know the original songs, they’re likely to know the movies being referenced and they’re all interesting examples in how an entirely different set of lyrics can be set to a piece of music. (The traditional example of course would be hymns but nobody wants to study that.) Possibly something like Party in the CIA as well as a lot of the humor comes from the dissonance of the vapid original and the darkness of the new lyrics.
As a data point, I mention that I’ve heard this about both Mike Myers and Michael Jackson.
Never once in my life have I thought that I was so Important that others weren’t to make eye contact with me. Seriously, WTF.
I wonder if he’s autistic. Some autistic people don’t like to make eye contact. He might have figured he was badass enough to be able to eliminate this uncomfortable thing for himself. It might not be coming from a place of You’re Not Worthy and more from a place of I Decided I Don’t Want to Do This Uncomfortable Thing and Since I’m Prince I Get To Make the Rules.
Asked thirteen fourth-graders: “Who here has heard of Weird Al?” Five or six hands went up, including one girl who started yelling about how much she hated him. But last year she hated the song from Hadestown that I played, so what does she know?
Haters gonna hate…