Turns out Gaga wasn’t a dick, her promo manager was.
He strung along Al, and then dicked him off without ever once even letting Gaga know there was anything going on.
If I were her, I’d fire his ass, or at least invite Al to one of my shows. Managers should know the social pecking order of music well enough to know that Weird Al wanting to do a parody of your music is something the musician SHOULD get on their “things that happened today” shortlist.
OR, in my cynical moments, Gaga orchestrated the whole thing with her people because the universe won’t mind too much that her manager is a dick, but it got press attention, and now she’s even more of a wonderful good person because she actually LOVES Weird Al and wants to let him do the parody.
He didn’t record the song without her permission, and he never thought he was recording the song without her permission. She (or her people, whatever) explicitly told him to make the recording. And he didn’t do what he would have done if he had gotten permission: In that case, he would have put the song through the full production process, made a video for it, etc.
Interesting to note that his highest charting album and biggest selling single of all time were his last album and the lead single from that album. Yes, it’s pretty clear he’s just not very popular anymore…
I hope he spends more time in Gaga’s undergarments for the new video. That would be awesomely icky.
I don’t think this is his best work – for me that’s still a toss-up between “One More Minute,” “Those Were The Good Ol’ Days,” “White and Nerdy,” and “You’re Pitiful” – but it’s another solid effort.
I think a great end to this story would be to have Lady Gaga appear in Weird Al’s video. It seems like something she’d love to do, so I hope one of them thinks to do it.
The only one who looks bad here is Weird Al. What is the point of going through the whole charade of asking the artists for permission if when they say no you release the song anyways and publically shame them on top of it? If you are going to pretend to care whether an artist wants you to do a parody or not then just suck it up and move on when they say no or stop asking them for permission.
His blog didn’t shred Lady Gaga. It was a simple explanation of what was going on regarding the delay of his album. It was hardly a hit-piece on his part. He probably knew he was getting blown off by her “people”.
The difference between your post and Born This Way of course, is that BTW advocates a policy of respect and love towards all people regardless of skin color, gender, or sexual orientation (A noble if slightly obvious sentiment) while your post is a dumb cheap shot that doesn’t even make the point you think it does. It is reasonable for her to label her song a human rights song because that’s what it is.
Nonsense. Of course it made a difference in Al’s mind. When Al thought that he didn’t have Gaga’s permission, he decided not to include it in his album, as he had desired. Instead, he made the song available to people for free, something for which he did not require any permission.
Now, you could question whether he should have made the song available on YouTube or not (again, something for which he required absolutely no permission), but it is absolutely untrue that asking for her permission was just a charade.
Nor did he do anything to embarrass Lady Gaga. He simply stated the facts as he knew them, without any criticism of Lady Gaga or expressed acrimony toward her. Your objections are simply inaccurate.
Once more: Weird Al reacted the way he did not because he got rejected, full stop, but because he agreed to jump through hoops and got a significant lack of cooperation in response, even just simple communication. He was disrespected and he responded in kind.
There have been a number of other artists who’ve asked him not to do a parody, and he’s respected that. Prince gets some occasional flak from Weird Al fans due to his routine denial, but Weird Al has always respected Prince’s wishes. Those exchanges just don’t get a lot of interest because they’re amicable and respectful. The ones we hear about are the ones where there was some miscommunication or Weird Al got jerked around (Atlantic Records cockblocking him, Coolio’s people miscommunicating, etc).
Really, just because he’s a friendly guy who writes jokey songs doesn’t mean he’s a novelty hack who can be disregarded.
He doesn’t require permission to do anything, he quite clearly stated that he can do the songs because his parodies fall under fair use. What he does is ask for permission as a courtesy, and then when someone says no he releases the song anyway, for free so its available to even more people and makes a fuzz about how the artist refused. That is a complete bitch move.
I understand what you are saying but he didn’t have to do any of that. He chose to do it, he could have just told them to fuck off and released the song anyways. There was never any guarantee that doing all that would have gotten him a yes. Releasing the song for free after not getting the approval he doesn’t need is nothing but a bitch move. He is basically only being nice as long as things go his way.
It doesn’t matter what “the problem” was. He asked permission, was denied it, and went ahead and released the recording. All the stuff about being jerked around is bullshit, because he didn’t have to do any of it.
And, unlike most of Al’s songs, “Smells Like Nirvana” actually mocked the original artist. Cobain took it in stride, though, and I can’t see why Ldy Gaga couldn’t.
Just because someone was a jerk to you doesn’t mean you’re given carte blanche to do whatever you want. The rudeness of Lady Gaga’s manager doesn’t excuse Weird Al’s behavior.
edit: In fact, our behavior in the face of someone else’s rudeness speaks more of our character than our behavior when people are nice to us. It’s easy to be thoughtful and considerate to people who are that way to you. Being thoughtful and considerate to people when they are rude to you is a true measure of character.
Actually, it isn’t really. It isn’t like it’s any great secret that he’s doing parodies of these works, releasing them online for free, and then releasing the albums later. It’s what he DOES, and it’s not like he’s changed that recently.
Until recently, album sales and radio play were much more important than internet exposure. If some behind-the-times artiste cares enough about their work being pure, and doesn’t realize the power behind interactive net media, then you can’t blame that on Weird Al, he’s just doing what he’s always done.
I personally think it’s sort of classy that he even bothers to ask.
If an artist cares enough about their image and their works to be willing to *publicly not support *another artist’s legal fair-use creations, that’s their right. Perhaps it’s worth it to some of them to be true to their ideals or to honor their work or whatever it is they do when they put themselves up on a pedestal.
The difference here is the diminishing importance of albums and actual sales figures as compared to internet exposure and notoriety.
