Ok, who else is excited about it? First album in 5 years, this is gonna be awesome! ^^

It bugs me that this is only the second post on the topic of the legendary Weird Al's new album, while the overrated The Lonely Island has had plenty of discussion. With that said, I'm very excited!

For those who don't already know, the parodies this time around are "Perform This Way" ("Born This Way" by Lady Gaga), "TMZ" ("You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift), "Party In The CIA" ("Party In The U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus), "Another Tattoo" ("Nothin' On You" by B.o.B & Bruno Mars), and "Whatever You Like" ("Whatever You Like" by T.I.). The big-budget live-action video for "Perform This Way" premieres on Monday, and the album comes out on Tuesday.

edited 17th Jun '11 9:26:57 PM by shrikecatcher

It's streaming hereabouts. I'm a casual fan and I'll admit I gave it only a cursory listen (didn't listen to any of the parody tracks all the way through, unless the polka medley counts), but I'm not that impressed with it. That "Perform This Way" video ought to be entertaining though.

edited 19th Jun '11 8:37:49 AM by MikeK

The music video clip for "Perform this Way" is equal parts hilarious and Nightmare Fuel. Should be a blast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss_BmTGv43M&feature=channel_video_title

. . . and it is!

I recently attended Weird Al in concert in Pennsylvania and I must say that I truly, deeply regret not following him for so many years. He's brilliant. I've been watching the "Perform This Way" video over and over since I got home and it's better each and every time. Probably my favorite verse:

"My straitjacket today / Is made of gold lamé / No not because I'm crazy / I perform this way"

The digital sub of his face over that dancer is pretty good. It's not perfect because you can see the "seams" and because he's incredibly stiff-faced in order to follow the direction. Still, very very impressive. Also Uncanny Valley, in what I suspect is a deliberate invocation.

Oh, and dissing Madonna while claiming to be original — pure gold.

edited 20th Jun '11 8:15:36 PM by Fighteer

I am just a bit buggged, though, that he didn't parody the music video's prologue.

He's an Avatar!

After Tommy Johnson's unfortunate death in 2006 (if you don't know who he was, he was the tubist... not a tubist, the tubist), I wondered who would be taking up tuba duties for the next polka.

It's a jazz tubist named Jim Self, who happens to be one of Tommy Johnson's students and collaborators. Yay!

I own it now, and it's pretty awesome.

"when I was hatched" : Illuminati reference (if you believe David Icke?).

David Icke believes * that the British Royal Family are Giant Space Lizards. Even other believers in New World Order theories think he's mad. Gaga uses Illuminati imagery in her stage show.

• He hasn't given any reason for us to believe he's joking

WMG symbols because tinfoil hats are appropriate.

I'm still convinced that the Illuminati was something that Dan Brown made up to sell books.

Bumping for a new new album.

Mandatory Fun

I have not gotten to listen to the whole thing properly yet, though I've seen the two videos currently out.

"Tacky" was catchy, but I feel it to be quite the shame it did not get a 27-hour version.

I have to love "#Wordcrimes", especially the Oxford-comma nod.

I absolutely adore the album. I've bought it and been listening to it all day, although I have to say that hearing "Wrecking Ball" in the polka medley diverted me to go and buy the original and listen to that for a while. So yeah.

Jacksfilms has the top comment on the "Word Crimes" video on YouTube, fittingly.

edited 15th Jul '14 2:40:21 PM by Fighteer

Listened to the album earlier today. Might need to listen some more before making a final judgement call, but nothing on it is at all leaping out at me like on his last album. It has some pretty good lines here and there, but overall? Eh. Not really as funny or entertaining to me as a lot of his other stuff.

But, then, I'm one of those weird people who has the UHF soundtrack as one of his favorite Weird Al-bums (with Even Worse as my favorite and Bad Hair Day close behind, and most of the albums between then and now ranking pretty well to me).

I just finished listening to it on spotify and I really enjoyed.However I will admit that I wasn't the biggest fan of lame claim of fame(though the youtube comment line was pretty funny) and mission statement(couldn't really tell what was going on on that song),overall I thought it was an entertaining album.

I think that "Foil" is my favorite song so far; it's just so completely off the wall, in signature "Weird Al" style. "Mission Statement" is making fun of elaborate, meaningless corporate jargon. Since I work for a big corporation, I see far too much of it on a daily basis.

"Lame Claim to Fame" is pretty funny, too, because we see that in real life — people trying to stake out a claim of self-importance based on some distant, trivial relationship to someone popular.

edited 16th Jul '14 8:03:42 AM by Fighteer

Foil was funny and I guess that explains Mission Statement.

"Word Crimes" was great. (I still can't believe he stuck "cunning linguist" in there, and the Take That! at Prince was hilarious.)

My one nitpick is that the "who or whom" debate is one that Grammar Nazis have pretty much already lost, so bringing it up mildly annoyed me.

The video for "Word Crimes" is so loaded with Easter Eggs, in-jokes, and Freeze-Frame Bonus that you could rewatch it dozens of times to pick everything up.

I think Word Crimes was probably my favorite of the album(that,inactive,tacky,and handy).

Foil music video released.

I was wondering why I couldn't see it on his Vevo channel; he's collaborating with a whole bunch of different channels and sites on these. That's a hilarious video.

"Mission Statement" is probably my favorite original. Since it's a Crosby Stills Nash & Young style parody, I feel like making the wmg that it's not only a parody of corporate jargon, but also some kind of dig at teenage hippie CSNY fans growing up to join the corporate world.

Other thoughts:

"Foil" is pretty funny, and I sort of think of it as the "A Complicated Song" of the album - that is, it tricks you into thinking it's going on one direction with the first verse and chorus, then goes someplace totally different.

I find Amanda Palmer mildly distracting on the otherwise pretty good Pixies style parody "First World Problems" - that is, her part is clearly supposed to sound like Kim Deal, but she just sounds like herself. Then again, it might all be in my head, and maybe I wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't read she was going to be on the album to begin with.

I like that, from Running With Scissors on, it seems like every album has to have an Epic Rocking track ^note "Albuquerque" isn't his first one, but that's where the one-per-album streak started. "Jackson Park Express" isn't really the best of these, but it does have it's share of laugh out loud lines.

"Jackson Park Express" is sort of this album's "Albuquerque".