It was a blind double-date. A girlfriend of mine was secretly (i.e., her mother didn’t know) dating one of Dr. Demento’s minions and the only way she could go out in the evening was if it was a “double date.”
She asked me along and my date was Weird Al. The four of us went miniature golfing and the whole evening was mostly spent with the two guys making bodily-function noises with various parts of their bodies. It was more like these “men” were 14 years old.
Weird Al makes a policy of always asking permission from the artists and composers of the original songs to record a parody, although he is not required to do so. Almost all of them are fans of his and have positive opinions of his song parodies. Some even participate in the recording or video, such as Greg Kihn and Mark Knopfler. Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana felt that they had “made it” when Al did a parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Don McLean often finds himself unintentionally singing the first part of “The Saga Begins,” when he intended to perform “American Pie.” And B. B. King has declared Yankovic’s “Generic Blues” to be one of his ten most favorite blues songs. Prince has been the only artist to consistently refuse him, and there have been misunderstandings. Coolio’s record label gave Al permission for “Amish Paradise,” although Coolio himself maintained he did not give permission. Al and Coolio have since patched things up, though. And Al had wanted to record a parody of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” but Blunt’s record label, Atlantic refused to allow it. However, it’s all in good fun, and Weird Al has a lot of respect among his peers.
As for “Like A Surgeon,” the suggestion for the title came from Madonna. Al returned the favor by having a Madonna look-alike in the video.
I heard an interview with Weird Al on the Nerdist podcast, and the host Chris Hardwick asked him what his music would sound like if he was making non-comedy music. Al said that he really liked synth and jangly guitar and would probably record stuff that sounded a lot like REM.
Anyone with the balls to do a style parody of Frank Zappa (Genius In France), and invite Frank’s son Dweezil to play on the song, is alright in my book.
I think he is loved for the following reasons:
As pointed out above, he’s a nice guy who is free of sex scandals and embarrassing gaffes. He lives to make people happy with his ridiculous songs. Therefore, he is protected and loved, or at least thought of fondly, by most people.
He produces good, clean, PG comedy in a world of shitty R-rated garbage.
He’s from the 80’s and, thus, has a nostalgia factor about him.
Some of his video are really well-made.
Honestly, he really isn’t that funny or interesting, but people (including myself) still love him for the above reasons.
And have Ray Manzarek play keyboard while Al is parodying Ray’s former bandmate Jim Morrison.
I like to think Weird Al popularized the form. Sherman and Siegel were doing it for a kind of MAD segment of the audience that was already used to parody. Weird Al took it right to the Top 40, which I consider a valuable public service.
Since Weird Al had James Blunt’s permission before Atlantic nixed the song’s inclusion on the album, he went ahead and released it on his site for free. (Scroll to the bottom.)
Not funny? Speaking as an expatriate, this had me on the f’in floor.
And it’s very listenable, like “Craigslist” and a bunch of others. I’ll happily add it to my playlist.
I was exposed to his “The Sage Begins” before I was exposed to “American Pie.” Or, at least, if I was exposed to the original, I merged the two songs in my memory. That would explain why the song seems more than 11 years old.
Still, the words I hear in my head when either song comes on are Yankovic’s.
In small doses a parody song sometimes makes me laugh. Now I’m so out of touch that I don’t know the song that he is parodying, so it is much less amusing.
If you can get your hands on his and Wendy Carlos’ interpretation of Peter and the Wolf, it’s a rare treat. I don’t know why it hides in such obscurity.
One of the best Zappa songs ever, totally gets FZ better than FZ ever did–and I say this as a gigantic FZ admirer.
Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo called Dare To Be Stupid “the perfect Devo song”.
You’re entitled to your opinion, however wrong it may be! 
You and your little friends at 13 probably had a lot of imaginary talent, too, I’ll bet.
This is a fair thing to say about the vast majority of song parodies in general, but Al’s are pretty much the best and most professional of the bunch. Once you get past his very early stuff, when it was just him & his accordion, his parodies have high production values and are very well sung and played for a “comedy” act: Al and his band are quite adept at copying all sorts of styles. Add to the fact that his lyrics are sometimes more clever and interesting than the original’s, and his parodies sometimes rival the original songs in listenability.
When it comes to parodies in general, the percentage of crap (a la Sturgeon’s Law) is very high, but you still get the occasional lasting work of genius that surpasses what it parodies. Way more people today know “You Are Old, Father William” than “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them,” or Airplane! than Zero Hour!.
Ditto. “And, of course, as always, the part of Bob the Janitor is played by the accordion.”
Okay, that is fucking AWESOME. He nailed FZ, absolutely nailed it musically and the funnest bit is that it’s so freaking meta because FZ didn’t like having to write lyrics at all and therefore insisted on writing what he wanted to say rather than what anyone wanted to hear so there’s nothing actually out there in Weird Al’s lyrics that Frank might not have already said. Beautiful job.
SmartAleq hit on something I love about Al - how meta some of his songs are… Two of my favorite examples are in “Smells Like Nirvana” when he sings about having marbles in his mouth while sounding all garbled. That was the big joke about “Teen Spirit” when it came out, was how hard it was to understand Cobain.
Another example is “This Song is Just Six Words Long,” a parody of George Harrison’s “I Got My Mind Set On You” that is SOOOO freaking repetitive. In Al’s version, the chorus is just the title over and over and over.
I love his stuff. Seen him in concert twice.
First of all, if you can do parodies too but don’t get paid for them - that could indicate two things. Either he can make more succesful parodies or he was better in selling this talent.
I know that feeling you get when you have a plan, that you think will never work because it is too far fetched. And then some time later, you see someone else had the same stupid idea but actually managed to sell it.
If you can make parodies, then why don’t you.
Second, “this person is not funny” is a classical troll topic title. It isn’t even a question. What do you expect to get out of this except people telling their opinion?