First, a heads up: Michael "Ian" "White Power" "Yay" Black has written a quick and to-the-point tribute to Weird Al (Yankovic, that is, not your neighbor, Weird Al Fletcher). You can read it here:

In Praise of Weird Al

Having done my good deed for the day, by cross-linking to the result of someone else's hard work, I will add insult to injury by simply making a few "follow up" remarks.

Weird Al only looks lame, at first glance (the shoes, the hair, the accordion, the I-probably-eat-my-own-hangnails crazy stare). In reality, he has a combination of skills only possessed by the non-lame. It's lame to take a legitimate song and just start changing the lyrics willy-nilly (like I do, whenever I sing "Happy butt-day to you" instead of "Happy birth-day to you"). But to take a verbal rat's nest like Eminem's Lose Yourself, untangle it, and put it back together as a parody song that actually adheres to the original rhyme scheme? That's the opposite of lame.

And while Weird Al's best-remembered songs are his parodies (Eat It, Fat, Like a Surgeon, etc.), he also has the non-lame talent to write his own songs. I listen to something like You Don't Love Me Anymore, and after I finish sponging up all the mouth-drool produced by laughing so hard, I think: "He could easily write a serious album of pop songs that would be as good as anything else on the market today."

Finally, let's not forget one more important element: yeah, Weird Al can do the word-rhyming thing, and yeah, he's musically talented ... but can he sing? Dr. Demento has seen a lot of musical performers come and go, but how many of them could really sing, and sing well? Weird Al actually has a really, really good voice. Serious breath control, darn good vocal range, and enough control over his tone to be able to weave in and out of various musical styles, mimicking whoever he's parodying at the moment.

The end result is not just musical parody (anyone can do that - see "Happy Butt-day", above), but musical parody that gets absorbed by high quality. That's what makes it so funny. It's so unbelievable accurate. It sounds so real.

So personally, I think Weird Al just wants us all to think he's lame. I think that when he disappears behind closed doors at night, and no one else is looking, he ditches the Hawaiian shirts, the goofy shoes, etc., and becomes this:



(If you think this entire post was one incredibly drawn-out and elaborate set-up, all for the purpose of deploying Joey Pants, then you ... obviously know me quite well)