How did it come to be that Weird Al Yankovic is the only mainstream parody song guy? I know that local DJs might make parody songs, but no one else seems to have broken into this genre - any reasons?
You have to be very intelligent, believe it or not, and many bands can’t pull that off. And despite his following, I don’t think it’s a very lucrative persuit. The fact he’s the only one goes to prove it.
Also, a lot of musicians like to feel like they’re “expressing themselves and their art,” and therefore, feel only original music is the way to go. Parody in that case is not worth their time. These people generally put out really bad, really boring music.
But my biggest guess goes for the “Not very lucrative” aspect. He’s very good (bloody brilliant, some would say), he got lucky, and he’s one of a kind.
Go check out Allan Sherman. Not a current act, but one you can still catch if you poke around a bit 
I could be wrong but I think he got mainstream airplay on the scope of Yankovic.
Here’s to the crab grass…
He’s not the only one, just the most famous one by far. Bob Rivers does a lot of similar stuff, and someone recorded all those songs credited to Weird Al Yankovic that aren’t his, like What if God Smoked Cannabis, Star Wars Cantina and Wrong Foot Amputated.
I’m tempted to say it’s because Weird Al’s the best in the business, and even he’s shit.
Every now and then a comedy song will sell a bunch of copies, but most of them aren’t worth listening to more than a couple of times owing to their musical rubbishness (and I include Weird Al in that category). This is even truer with parodies compared to original comedy songs: if you want a tune you’ll listen to the thing being parodied not the parody.
Nowadays when every single released gets saturation airplay on radio and TV, you would be bored of any limited lifespan comedy record long before it became time to buy it. And actual comedy albums sell nothing like the number of copies regular pop albums do, so I guess people value tunes over laughs.
and he’s too many.
Gerard Alessandrini of ** Forbidden Broadway ** legend. He is about a million times better than Weird Al. Pick up one of FB’s CDS some time.
Weird Al basically cribbed his act from Allan Sherman, and both owe everything to Frank Jacobs, who created the genre. You could also include Spike Jones, but he concentrated on the music, not paroding the lyrics.
Humor is pretty dead in America in anything other than a few sitcoms (and it appears to be terminal in many of them).
Ah, Allan Sherman . . . I grew up with his music; I was so upset when he died. I’m still pissed-off about it, in fact.
It seems to me Weird Al is the only one who does it because
A) You really only need one parody artist; the market won’t support two big ones,
B) Weird Al’s been around forever and has the name and the marketing power to stay on top,
C) He is VERY good at what he does, and lies in the perfect marketing zone. His humor’s perfect for the medium - irreverent and witty, but clean and accessible to the general public. He’s had the same band for two decades and they’re not bad.
D) Another vote in his favour is that Weird Al and his band tour, and tour aggressively, and it’s not just four guys and a PA system; they put on a full-court-press rock and roll concert with light show and the band just blasting away for a good 90 minutes. By all accounts it’s a pretty good show, too, and the longer he lasts the better the show gets, because he’s got a dozen albums of material now to work with, so it’s not like his playlist is just The One Hit and 35 minutes of dreck. Paradoxically, they take themselves very seriously as professional entertainers.
There are others who only seem to do parody when it suits them. They Might Be Giants lifted Particle Man directly from Spiderman cartoon series theme. Local a capella group DaVinci’s Notebook also does parody at times, most notably Secret Asian Man.
Well, since nobody’s mentioned him, I’ll throw out Cledus T. Judd, county music’s answer to Weird Al. He’s a pretty funny guy. For instance, even those of you who don’t listen to country are probably familiar with Faith Hill’s tedious “Breathe?” Well, Cledus’s version was “Breath,” as in:
I can smell your breath.
It’s chokin’ me to death.
The only one who doesn’t know is you…
Funny stuff.
Is “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda” still playing off-Broadway? I caught the show a couple years ago. Not to be missed.
Parody is hard to keep doing if you really don’t have a relevant and interesting point to make. So it’s very difficult to keep coming back and hitting the nail on the head every time, which is exactly what you have to to go ‘mainstream’. So most parody artists are short lived, one hit wonders.
Also as a source of humour, the joke wears thin very quickly. Especially if you keep recycling the same one.
Consequently “Weird Al” ceased to be either amusing or in any way relevant 20 years ago and you’d have to tie me down and nail my head to the floor before I’d submit to an entire song by him.
There are tons of parody artists in the filk genre. Tim Cavanagh (99 Dead Baboons) and Chaos (he’s from Singapore…his song about the Pipes of Cthulhu to the Abba tune, Fernando, is hilarious), just to name two, are quite hilarious.
That might actually work in Weird Al’s favor. 
He’s never had a point, or anything even remotely resembling one. He just takes a popular song and makes something silly out of it. Anything for a laugh, that kind of thing. Occasionally it’s amusing, but at this point it’s about him: either you like what he does and will listen to him do it over and over, or you won’t.
Does anybody else remember Bobby Jimmy, the guy who did the parody of “Rumors” called “Roaches”? I just found out that he’s morning DJ Russ Parr. And the Arabian Prince who performed with him was the same one from NWA.
NOFX has done some pretty funny stuff. Listen to their cover of “Straight Edge”, or their reggae burlesque “Kill All the White Man.”
might be hard to get into the buisness too, if you parody someone they might just go and sue you for stealing their work if you start makeing money off it. weird al has been at it long enough that no one really minds. its like how simpsons can get away with getting actors to come on and say terrible things about themselfs… if you started some new shows you wouldn’t expect them to put up with that.
owlofcreamcheese, parody is considered fair use.
Al only asks permission out of respect.
Basically, I think the reason why he’s lasted as long as he has is that he’s also, basically, a very intelligent, common sense, down to earth kind of guy. He doesn’t have a huge ego and he seems like a great, hardworking individual.
WEIRD AL IS GOD!!!