And Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant!

OtherCapn stole my comment. I'm glad they showed up for that 3 seconds or so of footage.

5 more days, 5 more songs. I wonder what they're going to be. I'm willing to bet thousands of kittens and puppies that "Let It Go" is one of them, maybe a song about John Deere lawnmowers, "Let it Mow" and that Miley Cyrus song "Trekkie Ball" about a star trek convention dance featuring George Takei. A boy can dream.

Yeah, really.

IT'S TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!


IT'S ALL TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE SLEEP

Awesome!

I thought the clown one was the original :(

That's the trouble with the new Weird Al album; "Royals" is terrible. "Happy" is terrible. "Fancy" is terrible. Therefor even if you put funny lyrics in, musically the songs still suck. Better than the source material, but until we get another song as good as "Bad," for instance, we'll never get a Weird Al song as good as "Fat".

That's a good point. He can only work with what pop music gives him.

I don't think I've ever heard the original. Maybe a snippet here and there, but never the whole way through; the Puddles version is the only version I'm actually familiar with.

Still, with that said, taking terrible pop songs and making them fun is something Weird Al has always done. Can we really look back and say songs like "Can't Touch This" and "My Sharona" were anything but humdrum and forgettable?

Homer: To hear that point, I'm gonna need examples with a bigger gap than "Can't Touch This" and "Can't Watch This" on the shitty-original-song/good-Weird-Al-song scale. The original isn't that horrible, and the parody isn't that great. Same with Sherona/Balogna. He can turn decent into good, but who can do anything with "Fancy"? Fancy is just... just awful...

Oh fuck, the one star was an accident! Didn't mean to do it! I'd never 1 star Al! Woe is me.

Same here, Zirc. I heard it first here, thought "wow that's really nice. Great pipes, solid musicians and even a novel gimmick" Then I went to the original on youtube. Terrible voice, sterile studio produced music and a great flapping cunt that we've seen perhaps a few hundred variations of over the past decade.

I'm not saying all of his songs are great or that he can turn shit into gold, merely that he's been working with terrible source material for his entire career ("Sharona" is worse than "Royals", and "U Can't Touch This" is only amusing in an ironic/nostalgic sense; I'm sure kids today will be looking back on - what is it? "Fancy"? - in the same way, twenty years from now)

I think my favorite song off the Nirvana album was "The White Stuff." I was too young to get the cocaine reference. But of course he adds "in the middle of an Oreo," just to clarify. He's only talking aboutthe cream filling of an oreo cookie. Nothing else.

Overall I'll take this over "It's All About the Pentiums." This song's irrelevance will stand the test of time the way that "I Want a New Duck" has.

Am I the only one who has no idea what the original song is?

oh grandpa

I'll concede some of your points Homer, but mostly because Zest brought up "The White Stuff" which is a good example of bridging a massive gap between horrible song and awesome parody. But at least things like "Rico Suave" and "Mickey" were kitschy; "Royals" is just dreck. Full disclosure: I do think "Royals" is at least better than "Happy," but I know everyone fuckin loves "Happy" so I haven't made as much of an example out of it.

I'm good friends with the person who signed The Knack to Capitol actually.

I had to DuckDuckoGo "Happy". First impression: I like the singer, he's definitely got a good voice. But the whole thing just kinda comes off as a nutless version of CeeLo.

IZ- punch him in the neck for me.

I hate "Royals" and despite its ubiquity and over-the-top sappiness, I actually like "Happy". But I've liked Pharrell since he really polished up the Neptunes sound in the late 90s.

This song was actually originally pitched by Pharrell to Cee-Lo, but his management turned it down.

>>oh grandpa

Wait a minute! Doesn't my ignorance of the shitty pop song imply hipster cred?

Fuck you, kid. Get off my lawn.

Indifference implies hipness. Ignorance implies grampaness. You have to be aware enough to know it's there, but just not care, and be able to prove how much you don't care by citing indie bands who do a similar thing to the shitty pop band, only in a hipper way. This isn't like TV or sports, which are cool to be ignorant of entirely. You need to know enough to look down on it, which ironically may require you to know more about the music than its fans.

Of course, being a grampa is pretty hip. You get the beards, the retro clothes, the Edwardian house filled with vinyl records and cat pee. Maybe that could be your hook?

A My little Pony Fan explains hipness to a Boxxy fan. Truly, this IS the portal of evil!

These days, my media is 100 percent internet, no radio, no TV. Certain things take their time getting to me.

Being 100% internet is pretty hip. Or at least, I assume it would be. I haven't done the radio or TV thing since 2002 (hipness alert!), but I can't imagine that twenteensomethings would be assed to deal with that stuff anymore. Radio and TV are outdated and passe... unless they've become so outdated that they've now wrapped around and become retro-kitsch. I don't know. I'm too busy with My Little Pony to keep up with this stuff anymore!

Pete, one staring Weird Al. You have become that which you hate.

I just think he's shit.

John Holmes: And I'm a Juggalo, the most subversive of all! I AM YOUR KING!

Hey Pete, offtopic, but didja catch that video of Violent J making a rape victim cry? I was looking forward to your input on that.

It's the folds, they absorb extra radiation.

There's a whole generation that knows Amish Paradise better than anything Coolio ever recorded.

As it should be.

A local boy kicked me in the butt last week/
I just smiled at him, and I TURNED the other cheek!/
I really don't care, in fact I wish him well/
Cuz I'll be laughin' my head off, when he's burnin' in hell!

As a white kid going to college in Northern California I had a Theater Class where we were talking about Shakespeare and Iambic Pentameter. The Professor asked "Does anyone know any rap?" and as the class sat silently I snorted because I realized that I know Amish Paradise. He asked me to do the first verse and uses it to point out how stepping out of the rhythm brings attention to those words. It actually made me understand iambic pentameter better, and I technically got College Credit for performing a Weird Al song in class!

I saw "Tacky" earlier today and posted quickly without realizing this was the Lorde song, which is an average pop single, while Weird Al's shtick is still boring.

http://i.imgur.com/iertCn0.jpg

Shut up

Thank you, Adham.

I've got no complaints about "Royals". A sixteen-year-old girl wrote it and did a fantastic job performing it; that is pretty exceedingly awesome. It sure beats the hell out of anything I was doing at sixteen, or much much older for that matter.

Yeah. I just checked it out. There's nothing wrong with it, to quote Ian Dury.