WEIRD AL IS CAREFULLY WEIGHING HIS OPTIONS!!!

[spmahn]

There's been a lot of changes over the last decade which has made Al's job all the more difficult. The music industry has changed so much, that it's almost impossible for someone like Al to release a physical album without it feeling stale by the time it is release, because so much of today's music is flash in the pan. Today's #1 single is tomorrow's Wal-Mart bargain bin. Even culture as a whole is rapidly changing, attention spans are getting shorter, and there haven't been any major cultural phenomenons like Michael Jackson or Nirvana in years past for Al to springboard off of.

Another issue is the Internet. With the advent of Youtube, and other viral video sites, Al has A LOT more competition than he ever did before. These days anyone can record a parody of a song, and often times, many of the best ideas are already played out by the time Al gets to them. As for music videos, they are a lot less important these days than they have been in the past. Alpocalypse had one traditional video, and it wasn't even a very good one. Lynwood had one as well, which was better, but not at the level we saw from Al in the 80's and 90's.

Al's career has been rapidly changing, and you can see it just by looking at his concert dates. Gone are the days of long tours across the entire country, instead we have shorter tours, in small markets, which take place in tiny venues. Granted, Al has never, and will never, sell out Madison Square Garden, but you think he could do a LITTLE bit better than an Opera House in Lebanon, New Hampshire (No offense to anyone in New Hampshire)?

Well, if the next one is going to be it, I hope Al holds it off a bit and finishes it off with one last Star Wars track in 2015.

[minnick27]

Al is playing and selling out 1500-2000 seat theaters. Obviously his bookers know he isnt going to sell out the Garden, but why would you book something that you know isnt even going to be close to a sell out. And as far as the smaller towns, he goes where hes wanted. Plus these smaller towns are suburbs of larger places. The Tower Theater in Upper Darby is 1200 feet from Philly, which is a major city. Baltimore, Cleveland, Vegas.

Ill give you that he has competition with YouTube. But quality wins out over quantity. Al could possibly be the millionth Gangnam Style parody, but he could have one of the best and still get more hits than the first parody put out. Al is a brand, and brands sell. Are you more likely to buy a Coke, or Bob's Cola?

[Killingsworth]

There's been a lot of changes over the last decade which has made Al's job all the more difficult. The music industry has changed so much, that it's almost impossible for someone like Al to release a physical album without it feeling stale by the time it is release, because so much of today's music is flash in the pan. Today's #1 single is tomorrow's Wal-Mart bargain bin. Even culture as a whole is rapidly changing, attention spans are getting shorter, and there haven't been any major cultural phenomenons like Michael Jackson or Nirvana in years past for Al to springboard off of.

He REALLY lucked out with Lady Gaga in that regard (even if her act too closely resembled another "cultural phenomenon" Al covered between Michael Jackson and Nirvana), but I've always felt that if Al had an idea for a parody that wasn't quite as developed or well thought out, he made sure it was attached to an artist who has had a fairly substantial career up to that point and whose star no one sees fading for at least a few more years (again, Gaga and Eminem are good examples of this). However, "TMZ" and "Party in the CIA" were actually well written parodies attached to names who've gotten bigger in the last two years so I guess they are exceptions that prove the rule. Even if Al doesn't parody the next big thing in pop culture, he at least makes sure to parody name everyone recognizes as well as images and personalities that will still be around for a little while.

Al's career has been rapidly changing, and you can see it just by looking at his concert dates. Gone are the days of long tours across the entire country, instead we have shorter tours, in small markets, which take place in tiny venues. Granted, Al has never, and will never, sell out Madison Square Garden, but you think he could do a LITTLE bit better than an Opera House in Lebanon, New Hampshire (No offense to anyone in New Hampshire)?

Even if the legs of the tours are getting shorter and the venues smaller, I feel like the tours themselves are getting longer. After all, Alpocalypse has to be the first album for which he's toured THREE years in a row!

Ill give you that he has competition with YouTube. But quality wins out over quantity. Al could possibly be the millionth Gangnam Style parody, but he could have one of the best and still get more hits than the first parody put out. Al is a brand, and brands sell. Are you more likely to buy a Coke, or Bob's Cola?

This is another thing that worries me a bit about the all digital model. Us fans of Al realize that he only releases albums every 3-5 years because he DOES care about quality over quantity of his own parodies. A lot of these young punks on YouTube and THEIR fanbases haven't seemed to realize this yet and have produced a lot of pure dreck because of it. Maybe they're trying specifically NOT to appeal to Al's audience or stray as far as they can from Al's style of comedy, but it;s just not healthy. Now, I realize that a lot of young musicians must keep putting out work early on lest they be completely forgotten, but there's a way to do that and pay attention to quality as well.

It's just that Al's parodies get the most attention as it is and if Al just releases one parody every so often rather than a whole album's worth at once, he may get unfairly lumped in with this new crowd by the general public and his image as an real artist and a consummate professional may get harmed outside of his loyal fanbase. Hell, it already feels this way since his lead single/video gets pretty much all of the attention anyway and his supporting parodies and originals fly under the mainstream radar especially since the media picked up on the whole "Gaga Saga".

I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that the more things change, the more they truly stay the same.

[anthontherun]

I dunno, I think Mike is right in that Al has earned a reputation that ensures he won't be lumped in with the YouTube amateurs. As long as his songs continue to be at the level of quality they are now, he shouldn't have to worry about that. But one of the benefits of the long time between albums is that the media treats every lead single as a "comeback." The truth is, he hasn't really gone anywhere; he's been busy touring and appearing on TV shows, but 3-5 years gives the general public the time to miss him so when "White and Nerdy" or "Perform This Way" finally pop up, they get a decent amount of coverage. Would that happen if a new parody were released every six months or year?

This is a total devil's advocate argument btw--I would love to have new material more frequently, but part of me worries that sooner or later, the lack of conventional albums will lead to less material overall. The realist in me knows that Al can't do this forever, but selfishly, I don't even want to think about him retiring or even slowly but steadily drifting away from recording new material. I also kind of wonder what'll happen to originals and, as someone said earlier, polkas. Well, 4/5 of the Internet Leaks were originals, so there's probably no reason to assume he wouldn't continue writing and recording them, but if each new release is designed to get buzz outside the core fanbase, he'll have to concentrate on parodies.

But who knows, maybe he can release EPs (digital or physical) with one parody and three originals or something like that. I don't mean retroactive/"single serving" EPs but four songs at once to ensure the originals don't get lost in the shuffle.

[Orthography Enthusiast]

I wonder about the originals and the polkas too. I'm less worried about the shorter length of tour legs, because I think that has a lot more to do with Al's desire to spend time with his family.

[Killingsworth]

I agree about Al having built himself a solid reputation over the years. I just think it wouldn't hurt if he still paced himself with the parodies.

[Kevbo1987]

I also kind of wonder what'll happen to originals and, as someone said earlier, polkas. We

I have the same worry. I don't think Al will stop doing originals, but I wonder if he might release fewer of them. I have to imagine he'll primarily focus on parodies. As for polkas, I kind of doubt Al will do any more of them. They seem like an album feature, and I have a hard time imagining Al releasing polkas as stand-alone singles. The only way I could see it happening would be if he released EPs.

[minnick27]

I think this will give him the opportunity for more originals. He's always said that the parodies sell albums. Well with no album to sell he can afford to cut back to maybe 2 or 3. We all think his originals are the better works anyway so this would be good for us. It just sucks that we most likely have another 3 years or more before we even know anything

[Killingsworth]

I wonder what other types of tolls this digital model will take on Al creatively? Al said in a Dr. Demento interview that there's usually a period when the album is complete and he can go back to listening to his favorite alt. rock station on the radio again instead of his usual top 40 when he's looking for parodies. Without his current pattern of releasing/completing albums, he may constantly be scouring the top 40 stations unless he still sets aside time to work originals/parodies separate from each other.

I think this supports the argument that Al will focus more exclusively on originals over parodies in an all digital era since he already seems to devote most of his efforts to them when putting together an album anyway. Why wouldn't he? They've always gotta be done a year ahead of the album (before the parodies so they seem fresher) and he has to write both the music AND the lyrics!

He probably still has fun doing the parodies and they got him where he is today after all, so he'll probably still do them. I'm guessing we might only see about four of them a year at the absolute most.

[anthontherun]

Four parodies a year? That's, like, the 1980s. We get five every 4-5 years now. Quadrupling his output seems unlikely.