"Weird Al" Yankovic: Alpocalypse

Alpocalypse feels like a crucial release for Weird Al. His last release, Straight Outta Lynwood, had the surprise internet sensation "White & Nerdy," sort of a perfect storm combining Al's newfound knack for Internet marketing (just about every song is now a potential viral video) with a deft parody that reminded us why we liked him so much as kids. But added to the pressure of topping himself is the fact that in the five years between Lynwood and Alpocalypse, Pop Culture itself has gotten, well, weirder. To say nothing of all the Gagas and Ke$has, Disney has been spinning out tween stars at a steady pace for the last half-decade, the Internet now has an even firmer hold on our lives, reality TV is melting our brains and celebrity "journalism" tells us more than we could ever possibly want to hear about Snooki or the Twilight stars' love lives. Simply put, what was once obviously absurd has become normalized, and we need Al, more than ever, to point out exactly how odd it all is. That's a lot of responsibility for a 50-year-old parodist who made his name rhyming off foods and television shows to the tune of 80's hits. Especially when you consider how many comedy musicians have cropped up lately (The Lonely Island, Flight of the Conchords, your idiot friend with a 90's Casio) whose approaches are a bit more contemporary.

Fortunately, inspiration struck. B the time of Born This Way, Gaga was undeniable, and the song itself would've been too obvious not to parody. Al doesn't squander the opportunity, either, using the song as an examination of Gaga's overall persona, much in the way he used Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to deconstruct them in a good-natured way. That song holds up better than most Yankovic parodies, and this one will too so long as people remember Gaga actually did wear a meat-dress.

Amazingly, it doesn't sound like the rush job it apparently was. The lyrics, like Al's best, are well-observed, suited to the original, and memorable in their own right. ("I'll wear a porcu-pine on my head / On a W-H-I-M...") They provide a neat little insight into their subject and get some laughs out of it. One wicked touch, though, which was not needed but hammers this parody into the stratosphere, is a brief background snippet of a Madonna soundalike attempting to wedge "Express Yourself" in between the lyrics. Cheeky.

Now here's where things get good, because the other four parodies are all pretty much up to the same standard as "Perform This Way." "TMZ," set to the tune of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" skewers both the celebrity journalism nonsense I mentioned above as well as the celebs they care so much about (from the bridge: Everything celebrities do is FASCINATING!!) with many real-life examples alluded to. And "Party in the CIA" takes the starry-eyed enthusiasm for life of Miley's original and applies it to the world of waterboarding and toppling regimes. His same-titled parody of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" is sold by the sheer confidence of Al's "character." And "Another Tattoo" (a take on B.O.B./Bruno Mars' "Nothin' on You") I think is better than it has any right to be based on the premise, largely because Al has a knack for free-associating absurdity that really explores the limits of a premise like "what's the most ridiculous thing someone could ink on themselves?" A good hip hop parody (or two) is a gift, because rap lends itself to comedy better than other forms of song. Al's comic timing on both of these is impeccable.

All of this top 40 radio madness is summed up quite nicely, as usual, on the stalwart polka medley, always one of the highlights of a Weird Al album: breathing a little life into songs that often have become passe by the time the album rolls around, and usually providing the improvement of being performed with accordion-fueled gusto. Speaking as the guy who's selling these songs on a regular basis, I can tell you in many cases it's the most fun I've had listening to them. for whatever reason, his renditions of "Blame It On The Alcohol," "Replay" and "Tik Tok" bring a smile to my face in particular. They're great for the kids, too, because unlike Mini Pops, they acknowledge the twistedness of performing something like "I Kissed A Girl" for 11-year-olds, reveling in the inappropriateness. I heard a lot of songs for the first time as part of a Weird Al polka, including but not limited to "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails and "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground, the greatest rap song of all time.

Truth be told, though, it's the originals that always get my attention. Pop song parodies have certain limitations: find a good subject matter, weld it onto the original, hope for the best. But in his originals, Al has the chance to play around, to mix and match (often indulging in style-parodies,) without being as in debt to any particular concept. He's free to muck around and "Dare to be Stupid," if you will. I may be biased because I have such fond memories of the originals on my first Al album, Bad Hair Day. I still listen to "I Remember Larry" and "Everything You Know is Wrong" and "I'm So Sick Of You" long after I've stopped caring about "Amish Paradise" or "Cavity Search" or "Phony Calls."

Al looks to have embraced tech culture as his permanent muse after dabbling successfully over the past few albums. There's a bit of overlap, but it's nice to get away from the "food and TV" phase of his career. It brands this album as a product of its time, for good or ill. Since so much of our lives is lived on the internet, it's only fair. Most of the trends he uses for material will probably still be relevant for a while. "Craigslist" does a great job exploring the insanity that lurks that website, where cranks complain about their "snotty barristas" and the desperate weirdos of the world post their missed connections. (No comment on whether I've ever posted there... cough cough.) That one is done "in the style of" the Doors, bringing Ray Manzarek in to play some awesome Ray Manzarek keyboards while Al outdoes Jim Morrison's croony screaming. "Ringtone" is a peppy ode to the way an annoying ringtone can affect one's life. It's a bit of a one-note joke saved by a couple good lines and a strong effort at replicating Queen at their most operatic. I also think that as an album closer, "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me" is not very strong compared to the rest of the album, providing in a lot of cases more general versions of jokes he's already done. But it can't be easy being the Weird one, and thankfully there are some really strong originals here.

"CNR" is Al's response to the Chuck Norris memes (again with the internet!) proving his gift for randomness is still up there wit anybody as he ascribes impossible feats to Charles Nelson Riley. I think it's a lucky thing kids are smarter than most people think. No, most 11-year-olds listening won't know who Charles Nelson Riley is (or what a "Matchgame" was) but inserting overly-obscure old references has always been Al's thing and if the kids are anything like I was (savvier even, I would bet,) it'll just make them want to find out. Besides, the beauty of these memes is that you don't have to know anything about what's being referenced to understand what the joke is. Knowing just makes it better. "CNR" also happens to be a top-notch White Stripes pastiche, authentically recreating in a sly parodic way Jack's crunchy blues guitar and histrionic vocal delivery from tracks like "Icky Thump." "If That Isn't Love" is a cutesy generic pop parody (think Hanson or Train) that pretty much tells you right away what the joke's going to be, and then does it well and manages to be super-catchy, which is the property of parody: to take on the qualities of the originals in excess. All of those originals do that well. But then there's one that sticks out.

"Skipper Dan." Oh, God, "Skipper Dan." This story of dreams gone wrong is, strangely, a perfect fit for this album. The same wit that enables Al to spoof popular artists also grants him a great insight into regular everyday characters like this. It's a triumph of songwriting, even beyond whatever comedic value it may contain -- it's more "dark and depressing" than "funny," but Al gets away with it because he is, after all, the "Weird" one. He manages to make a statement like this, to let this story unfold with a touch and tone any number of "serious" artists would like to have found. In his writing, Al often transplants dark themes onto the typically light and shallow mode of parody songwriting... I was what, ten, when I bought Bad Hair Day and heard "I Remember Larry" and "The Night Santa Went Crazy" as well as a couple of great anti-love songs on that album. The originals on that one (designated as a reference point for me because that was the "current" one when I was a kid and he slowed his output to one every few years) hold up better than the parodies (it was an awkward transitional time for pop music.) "Skipper Dan" being the highlight of an album that would have been great without it indicates the Alpocalypse may be, as a unified effort... Al's best work.

We needed a home run and we got one. Al deftly capitalizes on the strangeness of the moment for music, writes jokes that are either unlike those found on previous albums, or better versions of common ones, has fun, picks all the right targets, and in his originals, has way more hits than misses. He shows he's got as strong a mind as ever, maybe better, for pointing out the weirdness that creeps by in our lives often unnoticed. It feels current, but it also feels like it encapsulates the things about our current times that will still be remembered ten or twenty years on. Maybe. I can only speculate.

The point is, it's a funny album with all its parts working at maximum capacity. The parts that won't make you laugh out loud will at least make you grin. And besides, who among us hasn't considered picking up a trashcan's worth of styrofoam peanuts from some dude on the internet?

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