A Confounding Album

Most mornings, I’ll play a random “Weird Al” Yankovic album in the background while I make my son breakfast. This habit has helped me enjoy Yankovic’s entire catalogue, expose my son to an eclectic variety of musical genres, and generate ideas for this website. Most of the albums make sense and I can rank from being good with some incredible highlights (Poodle Hat), generally mediocre all around (Even Worse) to banging on all cylinders from start to finish (Straight Outta Lynwood). It’s “Running With Scissors” that gives me pause, though, because it has some of the highest high’s of “Weird Al’s” catalogue, but also some of the lowest lows.

Let me be more specific.

“Running With Scissors” is a collection of some of “Weird Al’s” weakest parody songs and strongest originals. They’re juxtaposed on the same album and it creates this experience where I’m waiting for the parodies to end so I can enjoy the originals.

These contrasts are especially poignant to me because, as Nathan Rabin has suggested on various podcasts, every “Weird Al” fan has an album that hooked them, and it was likely the album that was released around the time they were in junior high school. For me, that was “Bad Hair Day” in 1996 and I still love that entire album. But “Running With Scissors” in 1999 was a let down for me and this album was a key reason why I drifted from my “Weird Al” fandom until about a year ago.

Back in the day, though, I didn’t appreciate the original tunes the way I do now because “High School Me’s” musical taste wasn’t that eclectic. Now that I have revisited the album 20 years later, my criticisms remain, but I sense the imbalance and unease of this album even more. Hell, one of the style parody originals on this album is part of my Rock Hall Project as an exemplar of “Weird Al’s” work and I consider this album among his weakest.

To help put this into context, here’re my thoughts as the songs roll along:

The Saga Begins

I enjoy the tunefulness and flow of this song. But it’s not really very imaginative. It’s basically the plot to “The Phantom Menace” to Don McClean’s “American Pie.” I can tolerate it up until the lyrics mention midichlorians and then I’m reminded of possibly the dumbest addition to the Star Wars canon. And, like the original, it goes on for one too many verses and ends on kind of a downer. I often skip this track.

My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder

I like this song. Admittedly, the lyrical jokes aren’t that good, but musically it’s a solid style parody of Zydeco music. One of the themes of “Weird Al’s” music is how, even when a song doesn’t work that well as comedy, there’s spectacular craftsmanship in his song-writing if you’re paying attention. An example in this song is how well the declamation (rhythm to the words) works with the ends of phrases. At the end of the second verse, the lyric “Like he’s some tortured gen-knee-yus and I’m some kind of wiener” always strikes me as musically satisfying because the words themselves just fit into the phrase. So, even though the Eddie Vedder references were a few years too late and this is the second best song about him (the first goes to Eddie Vedder by Local H), I’d give this song a solid B and enjoy it despite it not being particularly funny.

Pretty Fly (For a Rabbi)

Arguably “Weird Al’s” worst parody. I’m not going to get too deep into this one, but the Jewish references are stereotypical/kind of lazy and Al just doesn’t have the vocal timbre to imitate The Offspring’s Dexter Holland without just sounding screechy and tense. If I don’t skip this song in the play through, it’s because I want to give it another shot and I always regret it.

The “Weird Al” Show Theme

A few years before the release of this album, “Weird Al” had a Saturday morning show meant for kids. It’s a classic. I suggest you look it up.

Its theme song on this album, though…is jarring. The song changes musical styles suddenly four times in just over a minute. In the context of the tv show, this works because it’s accompanied by a change in animation styles. But as a standalone piece of music, it’s a really unpleasant listen.

Jerry Springer

Ugh…another parody that I would put in “Weird Al’s” bottom five along with “Pretty Fly (For a Rabbi).” First, the Barenaked Ladies song on which it’s based is notoriously annoying (and a low point for that otherwise quality band). Second, it sounds dated due to the Jerry Springer Show focus and (now, but not really at the time) transphobic terms like “shemale” tossed around. Lastly, this song begins almost identically to the song that comes before it. For somebody who puts so much care into the musical and lyrical content of his music, this is such an odd “Weird Al” misstep.

I want to take a second to say that I don’t think “Weird Al” would write this song today nor use terms that are offensive to people who identify as trans or gender non-binary. This album was released in 1999 and we can’t judge its content by today’s standards. This is why I said the song sounded “dated,” which is odd considering “Weird Al” writes timeless classics like…

Germs

Now we get to the good stuff. Germs is a masterpiece and one of a few of his style parodies I would actually call a pastiche. It perfectly encapsulates the paranoia and anxiety of Nine Inch Nails’ industrial musical style by combining the emotions of a germophobic individual with familiar motives from NIN’s entire catalogue. In fact, I use this song in my own collegiate teaching because it so skillfully apes the NIN aesthetic.

I teach and introduction to music education course for students interested in becoming music teachers. For one of our lessons, we discuss music learning through listening activities. One particular exercise has the students break into groups to write down the musical characteristics of a musical artist. They listen to a group of songs and write down words describing specific aspects of the music. Because they were all born after 2000, I use NIN. I choose three well-known NIN songs (at least to me) and Germs by “Weird Al.” At the end of the exercise, I ask if anything seemed “weird” about any of the songs and in all the times I’ve done this, nobody has noticed that I slipped a non-NIN song into the mix. THAT’S HOW WELL-CRAFTED THIS SONG IS! If you didn’t know any better, you would assume this was a NIN song and that’s saying something!

Polka Power!

A fun pop polka medley that pretty perfectly encapsulates my junior year of high school. I wouldn’t have thought“Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger and “Semi Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind would work so well as polkas. But “Weird Al’s” knack for reimagining music as polkas continues to wow me. Would anybody else like to hear the entire polkatized version of “Closing Time” by Semisonic now?

Your Horoscope For Today

If you grew up in the 90s, ska was inevitable. It’s a combination of reggae and punk that has all the energy angsty white kids need to make up dumb dances and invent ephemeral fashion trends. It also gave the kids in marching band a confidence boost to hear trumpets and trombones playing catchy melodies on the radio. Ska still speaks to me culturally 20 years later, so I really dig this song, and not just because “Weird Al” called in ringers from Reel Big Fish and Tower of Power to play horns (Rabin, 2020, p. 246).

This particular song is also classic “Weird Al” in that it takes his randomness and organizes in an effective and satirical way. Horoscopes can be generic and random at the same time, so as “Weird Al” makes his way through all 12 signs of the zodiac, his usual madcap-randomness doesn’t seem as random. The satirical specificity of the horoscopes presents a perfect platform for “Weird Al’s” talent at spouting off random details that also happen to fit perfectly with the musical stresses of the song. Nowhere is this more apparent than the bridge where the narrator purposefully undermines the song’s premise:

Now you may find it inconceivable or rather very least a bit unlikely that
The relative position of the planets and the stars
Could have a special deep significance or meaning
That exclusively applies to only you

But, let me give you my assurance that
These forecasts and predictions are all based on
Solid, scientific, documented evidence
So you would have to be some kind of moron
Not to realize that every single one of them is absolutely true

Now where was I? Oh, yes.

This song is also a subtle nod to the chorus of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get.” In the MMB song, the first line of the chorus is “I never had to knock on wood,” which implies a superstitious subtext to the song…which is overtly obvious in “Weird Al’s” ska-inspired song about believing the alignment of the stars and celestial orbs to your relative position in time somehow means something.

It’s All About the Pentiums

I was not much of a hip-hop/rap fan until I started listening to The Roots after their brilliant 2006 album, Game Theory. So, this Puff Daddy parody was pearls before swine the first time I listened to it. It’s a shame that “White & Nerdy” was such a hit because it made pop culture forget this gem that is arguably better. What makes it particularly amazing is how the jokes don’t feel dated despite them being crystalized in 1999 computer lingo. There are some exceptions, like references to a 286 processors and a 32-bit graphics cards. But the lyrical content focuses more on timeless computer issues like slow processing and machines going obsolete almost immediately after you buy them. I still laugh at the line about “Weird Al” calling Bill Gates “Money” and calling him at home for tech support, especially now that Gates will soon become the supreme overlord to humanity once his nanobots get implanted in all our brainstems through vaccines to harvest our sweet, sweet data.

Truck Drivin’ Song

I don’t know if this song is offensive or not. I’ve actually asked some trans men and trans women about this song and I usually get a shrug because they don’t see it as anything but goofy jokes about a cross-dressing truck driver, but another friend of mine considers this a “minstrel song” because it’s a cis-male singing as a character who scraps gender norms.

One thing is obvious to me, though. “Weird Al” was not intending to offend anyone or make any big statement about gender norms. He wanted to make a style parody that imitated old Country songs where a bass singer is basically describing what it’s like to drive a truck but with an unexpected twist. It’s also likely just an homage to “The Lumberjack Song” by Monty Python. Now, is that how the song is interpreted by the listener? That’s a different story and the big post-modern question we’re all working through in modern society.

So, I’m also left shrugging when it comes to this song because it represents another highly competent original song that pays tribute to an otherwise forgotten musical style yet presents some problematic elements in a modern context.

Grapefruit Diet

Jazzy fat jokes. Forgettable at best…like the band “Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.”

Albuquerque

If any song were to cement “Weird Al” Yankovic’s place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s this one. Albuquerque is the quintessential “Weird Al” song in that it has everything. Starved flesh-eating weasels. A plane crash with one survivor and his somehow intact tenor saxophone. Soupy ashtrays. Chainsaws. Sauerkraut. Spelling.

Underneath the absurd zaniness is “Weird Al’s” unparalleled discipline and craftsmanship. As with any rock narrative song, there are places where the music accentuates the story like Bermuda Schwartz playing accented triplets when the protagonist hears a knock on his Holiday Inn room door or Jim West doing his best “George Thorogood and the Destroyers” impression when the donut shop clerk asks “YEAHHHH…WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?”

Now where was I? I kind of lost my train of thought… oh yeah!

THIS. SONG. ISAMASTERPIECEOFBOTHROCKANDCOMEDY!!!

That’s all I’m really trying to say. At least for now. You can read a much more in-depth breakdown of the song here!