The Big Squeeze: Day Fifty-Two: Melanie from Even Worse

The Big Squeeze is a chronological trip back through the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The column was conceived with two big objectives in mind. First and foremost, I wanted to inspire conversation and appreciation of a true American hero. Even more importantly, I wanted to promote the 500 page Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity edition of the Weird Accordion to Al book, which is like this column but better because it has illustrations and copy-editing, fact-checking AND an introduction from “Weird Al” Yankovic himself and over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro and over 120 new pages covering The Compleat Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 tour that gives the extended version of the book its name. 

Author’s Commentary: In the extended version of the Weird Accordion to Al, I talk about The Weird Al Show, UHF and Comedy Bang! Bang! as “Sneak Science Fiction” since from the outside nothing about them suggests that they’ll dabble in fantasy and/or science fiction yet that did not keep them from exploring subject matter involving human cloning, space aliens and time travel. 

“Melanie” operates on a similar principal. It begins on a straight-faced note of romantic yearning and gets darker, crazier and more psychotic until it is revealed that the lunatic singing the song is dead, having plummeted to his death after leaping out of a sixteenth story window to a grisly demise in front of where the object of his desire lives. 

Our crazed narrator keeps asking Melanie why she won’t go out with him but it quickly becomes apparent that he would be the opposite of a catch even if he hadn’t committed suicide out of frustration. 

There’s so much going in “Melanie” musically and lyrically, including a fascinating and highly original shift from poignant romantic longing  to ghost-based horror and pitch-black psychodrama. 

What more could you possibly want from a love song? Love of the non-delusional, non-psychotic variety?

Original Weird Accordion to Al entry: 

A good rule of thumb when dealing with Al’s softer, slower, gentler songs is that the prettier the melody, the more demented the lyric and overall vibe. “Melanie” has one of the loveliest melodies in Al’s entire oeuvre. With its lush, Beach Boy-style harmonies and gentle acoustic guitar, it’s the kind of obsessive ode to impossible love that would be perfect for weddings if the man lovingly, longingly singing it didn’t happen to be completely insane, and on the evil and menacing side to boot. 

I’ve written here extensively of the sociopathic and deeply deluded nature of Al’s creepy Casanovas, his sleazy swingers, his warped would be womanizers. The lovelorn romantic pleading to know why the woman of his feverish, sweaty dreams rejects him here may be the worst of the lot. 

Like a disturbing number of mainstream romantic comedies, the man’s conception of romance looks suspiciously like stalking and criminal harassment from the outside. He furthermore confuses horrifying expressions of psychosis, such as going through her garbage and having her name tattooed on his forehead as extravagant romantic gestures. Nowadays of course everyone gets someone’s name tattooed on their forehead. It’s a third date kind of thing, like sex, but back in 1988 it was still considered eccentric and extreme behavior.

The story “Melanie” tells is elegant in its archetypal simplicity. It’s the old boy-buys-telescope, boy-spies-beautiful-stranger-in-nearby-building-while-snooping-on-her-with-aforementioned telescope, boy-begins-stalk-courting-girl-with-psychotic-acts-of-obsession and then finally boy-deliberately-plummets-out-window-to-his-death-and-is-possibly-singing-the-entire-song-as-a-ghost story you find in pretty much every Taylor Swift song. Or in most of the infectious ditties cranked out in the Brill Building. 

The weirdo singing “Melanie” isn’t a complicated romantic hero, or even an anti-hero so much as he is a flat out villain, a demented misogynist who interrupts his hilariously misguided declarations of love and devotion to ask his would-be partner if she’s “too dumb” to realize that their love would last forever and forever if she’d just stop hating and fearing him long enough to fall in love with him. 

Like the country-creep creep crooning “Good Enough for Now”, the maniac singing “Melanie” seems to be practicing an early form of “negging”, that deplorable practice of pick-up artists who insult their way into women’s minds, insecurities, and then, if all goes according to sleazy, contemptible plan, into their pants. Am I once again suggesting that Al accidentally introduced and developed the concept of “negging” through songs like this and “Good Enough for Now?” Yes. I am crediting Al with everything in this column, including the construction of both Stonehenge and the Pyramids and the failure of the metric system to catch on in the United States.

Musically, “Melanie” is completely straight-faced, to the point where Al manages to invest a shocking amount of genuine, sincere romantic longing into the character of a creepy, stalkery, Peeping Tom. 

“Melanie” is one of my all-time favorite “Weird Al” Yankovic songs. It’s a pitch-perfect combination of naughty and nice, sweet and psychotic. It’s pretty enough for a summer picnic and insane enough to be committed into Arkham Asylum. It’s a gorgeously crafted song of very “Weird Al” Yankovic contradictions. Sonically, “Melanie” is a perfume-scented valentine on expensive stationary. Lyrically, it’s more like the 75 page romantic manifesto of a man convinced Katy Perry is sending him secret messages to kill small woodland creatures in her songs. 

“Melanie” is my favorite song on Even Worse although I understand why “Fat” was the big single and the engine behind his big critical and commercial comeback. It’s certainly a lot easier for radio and MTV to understand and get behind another food-themed Michael Jackson parody from the man who gave the world, and them, “Eat It”, rather than a beautifully dark Marshall Crenshaw homage that ends with the anti-hero singing it leaping to his death in the building of his beloved, yet vowing to keep on pursuing her in a way that’s supposed to be romantic and encouraging but instead comes off as threatening and unhinged.

The lunatic terrorizing the title character here labors under the delusion that he just needs to break through his love interest’s seeming hatred and fear of him in order for them to realize their destiny as soul-mates but he’s actually a powerful illustration of why restraining orders are not just useful but essential and also maybe she last beyond death, since the singer makes it apparent that he’s not about to let anything as minor as his own violent demise keep him from continuing his very one-sided courtship of/psychological warfare with dear, sweet, poor, poor, appropriately terrified Melanie. 

In popular music, love is generally more powerful than death. In the warped anti-romantic ballads of “Weird Al” Yankovic, and in this all-time classic in particular, that happens to be true of romantic psychosis as well. 

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Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

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