Echos and the Banana Men

The first criteria listed by the Rock Hall for its performer inductees is Influence on other performers or genres. In essence, this quality helps trace musical lineage through the historical elements of Rock and pop culture. The Rock Hall maintains the timeline for both artists and their art by recognizing those that have excelled in moving Rock and pop culture forward in some way. By this criteria, “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical reach is both obvious and profound. He has given novelty music, a once niche and esoteric field, credibility in pop culture. Those ripples, which started in the 1980s, continue to inspire artists to attempt new things in skilled ways. I could write about Weird Al’s widespread influence on countless individuals, but I’ll focus on two of his musical contributions to pop culture that have greatly influenced other artists: genre-fluidity and defining the Musical Double Act.

Without Weird Al’s polka medleys, there would be no “Hamilton.” Lin-Manuel Miranda was an enormous “Weird Al” Yankovic fan as a kid (and still is!). In a recent interview discussing Yankovic’s new Hamilton Polka, Miranda described his early admiration of Weird Al’s music: “I remember asking my parents for “Weird Al” albums for Christmas and I remember the Christmas morning. There were all these cassettes,  Dare to Be Stupid, Polka Party, In 3-D. I kinda got the mother lode all at once. And that’s the rest of my childhood right here.” Specifically, Miranda credits his “Weird Al” Yankovic fandom for teaching him that genre is less rigid than one may assume (Hirsch, 2020, p. 171). As I discuss in my breakdown of DEVO’s style, genre acts firewall between musical styles and distinct aural characteristics clue us in to knowing a musical artist when we hear them. Some of these details may be instrument/vocal timbre, repeated rhythmic patterns, tonalities, etc.. Distinct musical features separate musical genres into nice, clean definitions. Yankovic’s music, particularly his pop polka medleys, has broken those walls down by revealing that the bricks are all imaginary.

Extreme thematic differences combined into one song exemplifies an extension of this genre fluidity. Comedic musicians like Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island often juxtapose bad-ass gangsta rap styles and fairly mundane, nerdy topics from buying cupcakes and seeing a movie with friends on a Sunday to Michael Bolton’s big sexy hooks about pirates in order to exploit the stylistic differences for comedic effect. These particularly humorous contrasts can also be heard in Weird Al’s 1999 parody All About the Pentiums and 2006’s White & Nerdy. Direct links between hip-hop and nerd culture became explicitly apparent through the, admittedly racially problematic, Nerdcore scenes. Weird Al noticing how well pop songs sounded on accordion, clarinet, and tuba inspired many artists to experiment with genre and create fusions that shift our expectations and change entire genres of music, even broadway.

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s influence extends beyond inspiring musical artist to junk genre. His high level of musicianship and craftsmanship created a template for future musical comedy acts, thus helping comedic musicians achieve more than cult status. Through his songwriting and performance abilities, he perfected the “Musical Double Act.” It’s not that Weird Al suddenly made funny music cool - I don’t think that’s even possible - but he did make it a skill worth respecting.

Historically, some successful comedy teams and sketch groups utilized a structure called the “Double Act” where a “straight man” acts as the sane person in a setting. They set up the jokes while the other person, or Banana Man, delivers the punchlines. Think of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks doing the 2000-Year Old Man bit.

In Weird Al’s case, the straight man is the music and the banana man is the singer/performer. The instrumental music acts as the storyteller and the lyrics/performer are delivering the humor on top of the music. Weird Al is Mel Brooks and his accordion is Carl Reiner. But, for the music to play the straight man, it has to be beyond clean and virtuosic so the audience doesn’t know it’s there to set up the jokes. The music has to be so good that it can be ignored in favor of the jokes.

Weird Al is not only a funny and adept joke writer, he’s a spectacular musician. Pop culture requires comedic musicians to be equally adept at performing music and writing jokes. The world’s greatest band, Tenacious D, is a prime example of musicianship being on par with the jokes. One just has to listen to Kyle Gass burn on the acoustic guitar or Jack Black sing virtuosic scat syllables throughout their underrated HBO series to know that everything about the act is a joke except for the music itself. Hell, even the curmudgeons at Rotten Tomatoes called Tenacious D “surprisingly musically competent” in their review of Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. Musical comedy acts must prove themselves as both song and joke writers to be considered legitimate artists.

Because of his ability to cross genres with little effort and excel as a song and joke writer, Weird Al has earned a place in the hearts of musicians and comedians alike. Well-known stories within the music industry include how Sir Paul McCartney recognized Weird Al at a party in 1984, how Kurt Cobain asked if Yankovic’s intended Nirvana parody was about food, or even how Weird Al mimicked Rivers Cuomo in a recent video of Weezer’s Africa cover. For comedic legitimacy, one just has to look at the music video for Tacky to see a murderer’s row of some of the most successful comedic actors of the last decade including…Jack Black! Further, straight lines can be drawn from ‘Weird Al” Yankovic to any number of performers who excel as both musicians and comedians like Flight of the Concords, Garfunkel and Oates, and Bo Burnham.

Even if modern musicians or musical comedy acts don’t directly cite Weird Al as one of their influences, Yankovic softened the minds of producers and audiences to accept novelty music as potentially legitimate. He accomplished this feat by demonstrating that pop music need not adhere to strict boundaries imposed by genre and that the musicianship required of comedic musicians is anything but a laughing matter.