Few issues may have been extra amusing to a twelve-year-old in 1996 than an Amish-themed parody of the late Coolio’s portentously grim life-in-the-hood anthem “Gangsta’s Paradise.” As luck would have it, “Bizarre Al” Yankovic launched simply such a track in 1996, once I occurred to be twelve years outdated myself. Like everybody who’s been a child sooner or later previously 40 years, I grew up listening to and appreciating Yankovic’s prolific output of parodies, pastiches, and even authentic songs. From “Eat It” to “Smells like Nirvana” to “White and Nerdy,” there was hardly a pop-music section of my childhood, adolescence, and early maturity that he didn’t make humorous.
That’s to make humorous, as distinct from to make enjoyable of: in contrast to that of a predecessor in comedy songwriting like Tom Lehrer, Yankovic’s physique of labor evidences not the least tendency towards harshness or ridicule.
Therefore his enchantment from his very first recording “My Bologona,” an accordion-based parody of “My Sharona” recorded within the lavatory of his faculty radio station, to no much less an advocate of silliness than Dr. Demento, whose airplay launched the younger Bizarre Al’s profession — a profession that, as Yankovic acknowledges whereas telling the tales behind his iconic songs in the GQ video above, has not gone with out its strokes of luck.
But few dwelling performers extra clearly personify the outdated aphorism describing luck because the assembly of preparation and alternative. “Bizarre Al approaches the composition of his music with one thing just like the holy ardour of Michelangelo portray the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” writes Sam Anderson in a 2020 New York Occasions Journal profile. Seeing Yankovic’s notes for “White & Nerdy” “file felt like watching a supercomputer crunch by means of attainable chess strikes. Each single variable needed to be thought-about, in each single line.” To work in musical kind, even the silliest humor calls for his whole dedication.
Yankovic has lengthy confirmed a willingness straightforwardly to debate what it’s wish to be Bizarre Al, in addition to what it takes to be Bizarre Al. For a significantly much less easy model, we will watch The Roku Channel’s new Bizarre: The Al Yankovic Story. Most biopics take creative liberties with the lives of their topics, however Bizarre goes all the way in which, parodying the very type of the biopic itself whereas performing colossal (and certainly fan-delighting) exaggerations of the information of Yankovic’s life. Within the GQ video, for instance, he mentions getting the concept for “Like a Surgeon” by listening to Madonna throw it out in an interview; in the trailer above, Madonna turns on the door at his opulent mansion, a veritable succubus prepared to tug him into the musical underworld. And it appears a secure guess that issues solely get Weirder thereafter.
Associated content material:
“Bizarre Al” Yankovic Releases “Phrase Crimes,” a Grammar Nerd Parody of “Blurred Traces”
Two Legends: Bizarre Al Yankovic “Interviews” James Brown (1986)
Monty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His initiatives embody the Substack publication Books on Cities, the ebook The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video collection The Metropolis in Cinema. Observe him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
