Right, I shouldn’t have risen to the bait. My bad.
Well, for someone trying not to be disrespectful of his fans here, that sure sounded disrespectful.
You know who else was disrespectful and had no sense of humor???
Then she should have said no up-front, rather than putting Al through the rigamarole of actually producing and recording the song before deigning to say no.
Didn’t I just say this earlier?
As for the rest of your post, congratulations for sharing your opinion. I mean, personally I don’t feel the need to bang out a few sentences of stream-of-consciousness opinion about every artist that has any sort of thread started about them regardless of topic, but that’s just me, and our differences make the world go around, am I right?
Actually, things are a little more interesting than it seems at first glance. TMZ’s got an update, and it sure as hell sounds like someone is being squirrely.
Either Al is lying – unlikely, as he’s got a rep for being a decent guy – or the manager tried to shut Al down and realized he dug a hole. Or there was honest miscommunication.
The view counts lag behind by hours and always stop right around the 330 mark–I’ve uploaded over 800 vids and have seen it with tons of them.
Heh, Prince is weird that way. The Foo Fighters covered Darling Nikki, and in response during an interview Prince said that he didn’t appreciate it and that they should write their own tunes.
Fast forward to Prince’s 2007 Superbowl half-time show, where he included a cover of Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” in a mashup of several other covers. And no, the Foos had not given permission and had no clue that he was going to do that, but of course they didn’t have a problem with it. But then, the Foos are A LOT less full of themselves than most others in the music business.
Lady Gaga has less talent than a wart on Weird Al’s pecker.
And thus the story gets more coverage then her just agreeing in the first place. I’m inclined to back MsWhatsit’s take on the matter.
I totally agree with this and was set to say pretty much the same thing.
I kind of disagree with you here though. If I were an artist, I’d tell him “no” from the get go and not make him actually record the song first. I mean either you like his work and you’d trust him to do it in his usual style or you don’t like his work and just refuse. If for some reason this particular parody was way far afield from his normal work then I take all of this back.
Finally, anyone who honestly thinks that Weird Al will be remembered more through the ages than Gaga is just delusional. I don’t care for the output of either of them but there is a clear difference between a novelty act with some hardcore fans and a cultural phenomenon.
There’s a “Can’t Touch This” joke in here somewhere.
I think you got Gaga and Weird Al the wrong way round there.
I could kind of work either way, I have to admit.
That said, Al isn’t selling out venues at nearly the rate of Gaga.
Weird Al is a flash-in-the-pan that has somehow managed to have a career that has lasted 30+ years. I wouldn’t give Lady Gaga any hope for having the same longevity.
Update: Apparently Lady Gaga has now approved the parody.
And the glorious circle of [del]promotion[/del] life goes on.
Yay! It’s OK!
Yeah, Al’s 15 minutes are almost up…
I told MrWhatsit about this whole brouhaha – why he puts up with me, I will never understand – and his reaction was, “Well, yay for Twitter for once again solving the world’s social problems.”
Maybe he could have lauded “Pepperoni”, to the tune of “Paparazzi”…
Most of his silly parodies are, sure, kiddie fare. But there’s kiddies out there, and I can laugh at 'em occasionally just as I can laugh at good slapstick cartoons now and again. Not my bread and butter, but I understand the market.
That said, Weird Al’s recorded a handful of more “grown up” focused stuff over the years – usually the non-parody tracks on his albums. They’re hardly SERIOUS, but some dabble in solid wordplay, real humor, and an occasional dose of actual satire.
They’re too few and far between, though; I’d love to hear Weird Al release a “non-zany” album, if only to see if he could pull it off.
Holy shite, the internets move fast. I read about this maybe three hours ago on someone’s Facebook wall, and thought it was lame of Gaga to string him along through the approval process, review the lyrics, then insist he record the song and send it her, then say no, but hey, bitchier things have been done in Hollywood. Now the whole thing’s resolved? Very good then.
Don’t see myself running out and buying Al’s album any time soon (or Gaga’s for that matter), but at least I can walk away feeling like there’s just one less smidgen of douchery in the world.