The "Weird Al" Yankovic Filter
As some of y’all may have noticed, I am in hardcore book mode right now. I spent three long years writing The Weird Accordion to Al, a book I love and that turned out way better than I had expected, anticipated or even hoped. I want it to reach the biggest, most receptive possible audience because it deserves to be purchased and read and savored.
So I have been in a feverish state of big-time book promotion for the last month or so that does not look likely to end any time soon, since my next book, about the video game and movie Postal, which I co-wrote with Brock Wilbur (he handled the video game part) is due out on April 7th from Boss Fight Books and in July, or August, or September, the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al will be released, with articles on every episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season of Comedy! Bang! Bang! will be released.
So it is perhaps not surprising that I’m seeing just about everything these days through the filter of “Weird Al” Yankovic. George Harrison’s 77th birthday? Made me think about “Pac-Man”, Al’s long-suppressed parody of “Tax Man”, Harrison’s timeless message song about how unfair it is that rich people have to pay taxes. But it also made me think about “This Song’s Just Six Words Long”, Al’s wonderfully meta parody of Harrison’s big comeback smash, the “Hey Jude” segment of the first polka medley committed to wax and “What Is Life”, a Harrison song covered in an all-star tribute concert.
And Harrison isn’t even particularly associated with Al! But if something is happening in pop culture there’s a pretty good chance that Al has a song very directly related to it. Star Wars is a good example: all it took was two songs, or rather the right two songs in “Yoda” and “The Saga Begins” to make Al synonymous with George Lucas’ deathless space adventure.
Or take Jurassic Park. Maybe it’s because I have heard the “Weird Al” Yankovic song of the same name roughly five thousand times but for me at least, Jurassic Park belongs primarily to Al, and then secondarily to Steven Spielberg, who made a fairly successful movie out of it, and a distant third to Michael Crichton, who wrote the novel that began it all.
Alex Trebek’s health scare? Makes me think about Al? “Old Town Road?” Makes me think about “Achy Breaky Song.” Hamilton? “The Hamilton Polka.” No matter who is happening in the world I can connect it to a “Weird Al” Yankovic song or a “Weird Al” Yankovic music video or lyric with surprising ease.
Al has engaged so intensely and extensively with seemingly the sum of pop culture over the course of his extraordinarily successful four decade career and his legacy is so vast that it overlaps with a staggering array of pop icons Al has parodied or polkafied.
Even when a legendary musician turns down the opportunity to be spoofed by the master, as in the case of Prince, that also becomes part of Al’s story. Prince is conspicuous in his absence in Al’s discography. He’s the one that got away, the preeminent pop genius and biggest rival to Michael Jackson who never allowed Al to parody for his music for some reason.
I like seeing things through a “Weird Al” Yankovic filter. It sure beats the prism that preceded it. Before I decided to embark on the glorious adventure of The Weird Accordion to Al I had a tendency to see the world through the prism of Donald Trump for professional as well as personal reasons and that fucking sucked.
It sucked seeing ominous echoes of Trump everywhere, in pop culture and outside of it, even if it made pitching as a freelancer and blogging easier. I much prefer to see reflections of Al everywhere I go; it makes the world seem like a kinder, more familiar, happier place, and a much weirder one as well.
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place by pledging over at and get sweet Weird Accordion to Al merch https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
AND of course y’all should #BuyMyBook at https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Accordion-Al-Obsessively-Co-Author/dp/1658788478/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=weird+accordion+to+al&qid=1582749066&sr=8-1