Weird Al Yankovic is okay, I guess

Oh Comedy, thou art a complicated bitch. Comedy is without a doubt the most subjective genre of...anything, out there. If someone likes a bad film then you can explain to them why you think it's bad and why you hate it, and maybe if you're lucky (and didn't come across as a complete asshole) then you can convince them. But trying to convince someone that a bad comedy is bad...you can explain why a joke doesn't work, why it fails on all accounts and invertly breaks conventions, but it doesn't matter, if they laughed, then they think it's funny, no going back. The reason why I say this is because it really doesn't matter what anyone says, if you think something is funny then there is nothing that anyone can do to change that. But with that being said...I think Weird Al Yankovic is overrated [Hides in nearby bombshelter].

...Is it safe yet? Alright then fine, I'll elaborate. Now the most basic explanation of why I don't like Weird Al is that I think is parody style of famous songs just doesn't make any sense. Let's use his most famous parody song as an example, "Eat it" a parody of Michael Jackson's 80's classic "Beat it", however in Weird Al's version the song is now about food, hence the title. Now admittedly from a technical stand point this video does everything right for a parody, it matches the tone and style of the original source material that their spoofing and it has great accuracy and from a visual stand point it is a very good spoof; my big problem with it being the lyrics of the song. Who in their right mind listens to the song Beat It and somehow connects that to food? There is no connection apart from the fact the words 'beat' and 'eat' rhyme, but if that's the case then they could have made it about anything, they could have called it "Feet it" and had it be about feet, they could have called it "Greet it" and made it about saying hello to people, they could have called it "meat it" and have it be about carnivores...or cannibals...or food--no wait...

My point is, in order to make a parody of something, there needs to be something that is connecting the joke to the material, food and Michael Jackson do not have anything in common, they're not even complete opposites which means there's no parallel, they're just two random things put together for no reason. And even then, is food really that funny? Writing an entire song about trying to get someone to eat their dinner? That's not even funny in context Hell they could have made the song about masturbating, what with the name being "Beat It". At least then there is a common denominator that connects the joke to the material. Now with that being said some of his songs I do think are funny, for example in his latest work the song "Foil" is funny, not because of how it connects to the material but because of how exaggerated the joke goes from turning it into keeping food hygienic to protecting yourself from aliens and government conspiracies. So I do think the guy can be funny, but man the ideas he has and the way he connects a song to a joke is just really weak in my eyes.

Now let's talk about a song parody which I absolutely love, Teddie Films "We Are Never Gonna Cook Together" a parody of the Taylor Swift song being sung by the characters of Breaking Bad. See now that is a parallel, just the idea of taking something so dark and mature as Breaking Bad and then combining it with tween pop sensation Taylor Swift, that's not just a random pick but they intentionally went with the most opposite thing that they could think of and that makes it incredibly funny. And more so this parody also has the technical aspect, the sets, the costumes, the lyrics are all designed to feel like they accurately represent the show, the closer the parody gets to mimicking the original makes it all the funnier. And unlike Eat It, the focus isn't on parodying the artist, but the idea. This being a Taylor Swift song is not the joke, it's just an element to the joke. The joke here being the characters of Breaking Bad singing about their problems in the form of a pop song, and that's hilarious.

Again, comedy is very subjective so it doesn't really matter what you like or what you dislike, if it makes you laugh then that's fine, there's no harm in finding Weird Al funny, afterall most of his parody songs actually still sound better than the originals.

-Danny