Polka Face!

[Bruce the Duck]

This is an excellent new polka medley! I was hoping for a themed medley this time, but with so many years between albums this is the right way to go. Best parts were I Kissed a Girl, Replay, Tick Tock ( loved the yodling gag), and Womanizer (Al did the impossible - He actually made that horrid song listenable!). There are a few notable singers missing from here (Beyonce, Miley, and Taylor Swift), but they may be parodied perhaps. Also, with no Black Eyed Peas, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a Boom Boom Pow parody. Anyway, great polka and i'll be looking forward to hearing the studio version.

[Big Spoon]

Jeremy! Welcome back!

[TMBJon]

I don't think anyone reading this will be surprised to learn that I sort of disagree with Jeremy.
( )

My disagreement is regarding the missing artists/lack of theme comments. I actually do believe this is sort of a themed polka - not nearly as overt as Angry White Boy or Alternative of course. The theme to me is centered in the fact that the medley is bookended by Poker Face; in other words, all of the songs here are pop music circa 2009/2010 with Lady Gaga ruling over them all. The songs in between are her "little monsters." Sort of weak, I know, but that's the best way I can think to explain it. She really is the queen of pop right now and seems to have a new hit out every two months, despite only being "around" for less than two years. Al probably really wanted to do a Lady Gaga parody, but couldn't pass up the chance to do a song called Polka Face so this was his tribute to her instead.
It would have been nice to include "Single Ladies" for sure, but I don't know if Beyonce really falls within this realm. Swift and Cyrus probably could have fit in, though I still say the number one song missing from this is Fire Burning by Sean Kingston. Would have fit perfectly with the abstract theme I mentioned above, plus would have sounded amazing polkafied.

[JEDM]

Woah... Damn. Hello there, Jeremy!

[Demented Dustin]

I recall a really short clip of Al at the Grammys watching the live performance of Blame It by Jamie Foxx and I commented that Al seemed to be really getting into it and was hoping he was in "writing mode" and would include it into his next album somehow. Nicely done Al!

[amzo39]

Haha I remembered that too.

[Teh Dingo]

OK, who else hopes he autotunes Blame It on the album version?

[Killingsworth]

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised myself that Beyonce's "Single Ladies" didn't make it into this polka...Al would've done that really well...looking at how all his polkas went chronologically I always thought he arranged polkas for every album in a "rock/pop/rock/pop" pattern...maybe that was just a coincidence and "Alternative" and "Angry White Boy" were the only intentional themed polkas and they just happened to be timed that way...both this and "Polkarama!" could be classified as "pop" polkas...maybe Al just didn't notice any new relevant emerging trends in the current "alternative" rock scene, so he just went to the Top 40 charts again...actually, this polka does remind me of a performance by Chad Neidt I saw at CU four months ago (if you don't know him, he's another comedic musician of sorts...I'd say he's more like Stephen Lynch than Al since most of his songs tend to be pretty vulgar, but still funny...and he doesn't credit Al as an influence either) fortunately, the only non-exceedingly vulgar song he did was called "Now That's What They Call Music" which is an acoustic guitar medley of songs using a certain chord progression that always seem to shoot to the top of the charts inexplicably mixed with his own funny lyrical commentary on said chord (sort of in a similar vein to Al's polkas in a way) you can listen to this song on his MySpace page,but I saw him preform a live version that included Poker Face, WYL and Replay among others...

[TMBJon]

I think the artist included in this medley who is most likely to have a full length parody as well would be Katy Perry.

All of Al's recorded work is a function of the pop music scene around him and what just so happens to be popular at the time he's writing for his next album. So in other words the big summer hits of this year are very likely to be parodied on his next album, and I am anticipating "California Gurls" to be one of the biggest hits of 2010.

[RoyalJester]

I heard this at the Verona, NY (Turning Stone Casino) concert on June 21st - awesome.
It's cool when the artist brings a bit of new material to the show; I think it worked great as an opener.

The crazy Gaga fan in me was VERY pleased to hear Poker Face used; I just knew there was going to be an Al-ification of Gaga of some sort at some point.
I guessed it on a Gaga fanforum on January 25th: http://gagadaily.com/boards/showthread.php?t=9293, prodded by this interview of Al: http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1793908

In part thanks to/blame to Gaga, I'm relatively aware of the recent-mainstream scene now, so I actually recognized quite a few of the other songs in the medley as well.
(I still want a full parody of some of these people, though)

For the lulz, I decided to combine the songwriter credits in alphabetical order. Here's what I got
(Rafael Akinyemi/Aaron Bay-Schuck/Justin Bieber/Christopher Bridges/Nikesha Briscoe/James T. Brown/Dwayne Carter/Jared Cotter/Taio Cruz/Jason Derulo/Tramar Dillard/Cathy Dennis/Justin Franks/Jamie Foxx/Stefani Germanotta/Lukasz Gottwald/Allan Grigg/Kamaljit Singh Jhooti/Keidran Jones/Dave Haywood/Christopher Henderson/Josh Kear/Charles Kelley/Nadir Khayat/Philip Lawrence/Benjamin Levin/Bruno Mars/Max Martin/Brandon Melachon/Scott Mescudi/Christina Milian/Alecia Beth Moore/Faheem Rasheed Najm/Terius Nash/Oladipo Omishore/Katy Perry/Jonathan Rotem/Hillary Scott/Karl Johan Schuster/Kesha Sebert/Fraser T. Smith/Christopher Stewart/Theron Thomas/Timothy Thomas/Nate Walker/Al Yankovic/Adam Young)