As a common pop culture phenomenon? He certainly has.
When I was in university all you had to do to get people to a show was put SKA in big block letters on the poster. You ddin’t have to actually state who the artists were; simply claiming that the music might resemble ska was enough to get paying customers out.
Today I doubt most students at my alma mater know what ska is. The ska labels are all dead.
How does needing to hear the song first constitute leading him on? I don’t believe there was a conditional: if you do X then I will do Y. The deal was, Al creates the song, presents it to Lady Gaga and Lady Gaga gives a thumbs up or down. Rejection was clearly an option, and one that Al must have been aware of.
Thousands upon thousands of people go through rigorous job interviews only to be ultimately told “no thanks.” Does that constitute being “led on?”
I agree. Putting something on Youtube is releasing it for public consumption even more so than putting it on a disc.
Obviously none of you have heard Polka Face (look it up on youtube),which I’m assuming Al ALSO plans to put on his new album. Since Polka Face is much older than Perform this Way (he performed it on his 2010 tour) I would assume he already got strung along once with Gaga’s people. I wonder how that went the first time around???
Why would you assume that? There are a lot of songs Weird Al does and tries out during his concerts that he wouldn’t put on an album. I think he even does some Prince songs live. I’m quite certain he doesn’t ask permission for those.
His policy is to ask before putting a song on an album. That’s all he’s claimed so far, and his actions have been consistent with that policy.
1960s: Joni Mitchell
1970s: Stevie Nicks
1980s: Rickie Lee Jones
1990s: Cranberries, Natalie Merchant, Alanis Morrissette, etc…
2000s: GA GA OH LALA, GA GA OH LA LA, GA GA OH LA LA, GA GA OH LA LA
This is seriously how far the female singer/songwriter pop genre has fallen? If you had turned on a mainstream radio station - the kind that average people, not college hipsters, listened to - in the previous decades, you’d hear the women above. Now all we have is the infantile, obnoxious, droning, repetitive, overproduced, probably cocaine-fueled garbage of Gaga.
However, and this is an important point that’s being overlooked, that is not what releasing a song means. Releasing a song means putting it up for sale. Weird Al has not done that against anyone’s wishes.
Anyone can perform any song they like, for free, anywhere.
Yes, Al has performed Prince songs LIVE (and he sang 1999 with Celine Dion on an Al TV episode). However, none of his Prince PARODY ideas have ever seen the light of day. The closest thing was 1999 being in a VERY early Polka (which was before his first album even got released). And I’m the co-author of The Weird Al Songography so I should know…
I would be very surprised if Al hadn’t recorded Polka Face months ago, especially since Perform This way made 12 of 12 songs for the album. It hasn’t been his method of operation to write concert-only songs in a long time. Infact, most concert-only songs were songs that got rejected by the original artist, which usually meant that Al only did a single verse (Laundry Day, Gee I’m A Nerd, etc) since he hadn’t had the entire lyrics planned out when he got the no. One way or another, Al had to have discussed Polka Face with Gaga’s people long before Perform This Way was planned. I can’t believe nobody is talking about that, since it’s not like the song is a secret.
Well, if you listen long enough, you’ll get some Ke$ha and Katy Perry also! 
Then maybe you’re just wrong in your assumption.
To elaborate a bit (after the edit window), it’s possible he asked about Polka Face, but then I would have expected him to say something in the blog about it. “I should have seen this coming since I was turned down for Polka Face,” or “I was taken aback because Gaga had already given permission for Polka Face.” Something. Since it was never brought up, it seems most likely that this is the first time he’s attempted to contact Gaga Inc. He never gives any indication in the blog that he’s spoken to them before.
No, “releasing” a song means giving the public access to it. In times past this was nearly always done by selling records, but giving away records would have constituted a release as well.
The parody is out there now–whatever it was that Gaga thought it might do with respect to the original has been done. It doesn’t matter whether sales are transacted.
Perhaps, but Weird Al is not, to my knowledge, giving away records of the song. He’s allowing people to hear it - the equivalent of performing it in concert, which has never been considered releasing a song.
I can download any Youtube video as easily as I did the Angels & Airwaves album that they officially released as an online freebie.
Eh, I’m probably just old…
Yes, but legally speaking, internet sites like YouTube are still considered to be the equivalent of a concert rather than a album release.
Eventually, laws and official regulations will catch up to the reality, but they aren’t there yet.
Legally speaking, YouTube both distributes copies and performs works. It is no different than a release, which allows people to buy copies or allows radio stations to perform them for the public.
I think the real difference is, he doesn’t want to make money off of [parodies of] other people’s work without their permission. That’s not a problem if you’re just putting stuff on YouTube.
NOW PLAYING
** PUPPET SHOW **
Lady Gaga
Cool! All I ever did was interview him on the phone for my university student newspaper. You are my new hero. 