Friday, October 30, 2009

Dual-theme "Weird Al" Yankovic Songs

YouTube playlist for this article,
playlist compilation article


Weird Al is probably currently the best-known parodist of long-time longevity. He made his mark in the early 80s and continues even now. This blog item is mostly about his parodies that capture music from one song and integrates lyrics and visuals of his vision from another song. Viewing and listening to such music videos can be somewhat discombobulating. You might be pulled in two directions of what to pay attention to, especially if you are familiar with both cultural aspects you see and hear. The following links take you to Al's mostly dual-theme music videos.

"The Saga Begins"
Music from "American Pie", visuals & lyrical creations from Star Wars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcjgJSqSRU

"Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies"
Music from "Money for Nothing", visuals & lyrical creations from Beverly Hillbillies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4SDhrTPOiI

"Hey Ricky"
Music from "Mickey", visuals & lyrical creations from I Love Lucy (with closing bars of the I Love Lucy theme song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZlLQLFq_H4

"Jurassic Park"
Music from "MacArther Park", visuals & lyrical creations from Jurassic Park (with guest appearance by Barney the dinosaur)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4zvQfDhi0

"Yoda"
Music from "Lola", visuals & lyrical creations from Star Wars (videos created by Al fans)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0nykvHRuc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOPsfaQRcbk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMpDHEVaI1k (added feature—Legos)
Weird Al himself performs the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaFhHCMMuc.

"Bedrock Anthem" and "Spy Hard" have slightly different flavors of dual themes than the aforementioned songs.

"Bedrock Anthem"
Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedrock_Anthem, this song is a "parody of 'Under the Bridge' and 'Give It Away' both by the Red Hot Chili Peppers". Visuals & lyrical creations are mostly from Flintstones cartoons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtV_nQKhkdY

"Spy Hard"
Combination of title Die Hard and James Bond features (introductory credits with implicitly-nude women silhouettes, similarity to theme songs from Goldfinger and Thunderball)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7KMMxAQp8I

Medic-Al—At one time, I had planned to write a separate blog item regarding Al and medical-theme songs, however, I have encountered only three blatant ones thus far. Although this article is about dual themes, I hope my inclusion of these video references (which I ran across while rooting around for dual themes) manage to tickle your funnybone.

"Living With a Hernia" (parody of James Brown's "Living in America")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Ow1nlafOg ("Living with a Hernia")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeoHcB9_wss ("Living in America")

"Like a Surgeon" (parody of Madonna's "Like a Surgeon")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA ("Like a Surgeon")—note reference to the Three Stooges starting about 0:10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100 ("Like a Virgin")

"Pancreas" (Al creation that sounds like a combination of Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice"; visuals & lyrical creations pertain to the pancreas.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqDBB0no6dQ

3 comments:

whilldtkwriter said...

CNN article about Weird Al, posted the day after I posted my blog article--
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/30/weird.al.yankovic

whilldtkwriter said...

Note: At the time I posted the article, the links were all good. If they go to video-pulled pages, please do Google video searches for the song titles and hope the videos surface somewhere. They're very entertaining!

whilldtkwriter said...

I replaced links that had resulted in youtube copyright violation screens.