A Weird Al "History of Pop/Rock Timeline" Idea

[yankofan]

What a great project you have taken on!

[quote="Skippy"]Even Worse offers a couple of challenges. There's the obvious "You Make Me," "Velvet Elvis," "Twister," and "Good Old Days" targets, so that's nice.

I was just curious if my thoughts were the same as the "obvious targets" that you have already determined. You Make Me/Oingo Boingo, Velvet Elvis/Police, Twister/Beastie Boys? It is funny that the summer that Even Worse came out, I was listening to Good Old Days and then a friend played James Taylor's Only One for me and I feel that it was my first "Oh, I see what you did there" Al moment.

Are these style parodies considered canon in the World of Weird Al Yankovic?

[Skippy]

Yep, those are the obvious ones and are either confirmed by Al in his old Ask Al series, or just so flat-out obvious that it's unnecessary to wonder. There are a couple of places that list style parodies, and many are agreed upon/confirmed but some are still up in the air. There's TheLazenby's Ultimate Parody Guide, this list from the wiki, and this list from We've Got It All on UHF (which is nice because you can see what's been confirmed by Al himself.)

I think "Dog Eat Dog" was the first time I realized that Al was doing what we now call style parodies (I had no idea what to call them then.) I also remember hearing Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive" like 10+ years later and thinking, "Holy crap, this is Slime Creatures!"

[Genius in Maine]

I also remember hearing Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive" like 10+ years later and thinking, "Holy crap, this is Slime Creatures!"

That was my reaction when I first heard "Hyperactive" as well.

[PlayAWarGame]

Wasn't Hardware Store a "failed style parody" that was finished anyway because it was good enough to justify its existence despite not being any kind of parody?

[minnick27]

Yes

[Good Enough For Now]

I had some biting commentary prepared for when we got to Alapalooza, I hope this thread isn't dead!

[Skippy]

I had some biting commentary prepared for when we got to Alapalooza, I hope this thread isn't dead!

It's not. Just caught up in all the MF excitement/ton of work. Will definitely get back to it soon!

[Skippy]

All right, guys. It's time for the tough-to-crack UHF. I'm skipping the commercial parodies (since that's not really what this is about) and "Fun Zone." (Unless somebody has something on that? I can't imagine it's a style parody though.) Unaccounted for are "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters..." which I think is just a straight original, and "Let Me Be Your Hog," which could probably be assigned to some heavy metal act or just the genre if we wanted to. It doesn't sound like anything specific to me.

The one clear-cut style parody is "Biggest Ball of Twine," which is clearly based on Harry Chapin's "30,000 Pounds of Bananas."

For "UHF" (the song), there is some speculation that it's a style parody of "State Of Shock" and I do hear the resemblance. It's close enough to go with I think.

With some of the songs, we've usually been satisfied with just saying it's a parody of a certain genre, and that's always been the case with "Generic Blues." But I've found a song so close that I don't think there's any doubt that it's the basis for GB. Check out Muddy Waters' version of "Lonesome Road Blues." Al's is more electric, but that harmonica is dead-on in several places, and there's the lyrical connection with the first verse.

[Big Spoon]

There was discussion about Attack Of The Radioactive Hamsters From A Planet Near Mars and the possible artists it was a style parody of in the topic for the song the other day. I've always heard a little bit of Beach Boys in there, minnick said he hears some B-52's as well.

[Skippy]

Time for "Off The Deep End," and after much fruitless searching, I have to throw in the towel on "You Don't Love Me Anymore." I can't find anything that sounds enough like it to call it a style parody. The easy answer is Extreme's "More Than Words" since that's what the YDLMA video parodies, but really the songs aren't that close besides being slow acoustic love songs. The end does kind of remind me a little of Kiss's "Beth," but that's about it.

"Trigger Happy" as we all know is early Beach Boys/Jan & Dean. The closest individual songs are, IMO, "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Surf City." The beginning is a reference to "Skeet Surfin'" from the movie Top Secret!, which is itself a Beach Boys style parody so we're basically into Inception territory here.

"I Was Only Kidding" is another style parody of Tonio K., this time based on the song "H-A-T-R-E-D."

"When I Was Your Age" is most likely (and widely accepted as) Don Henley. To me, it sounds the most like "Dirty Laundry," although "All She Wants To is Dance" has also been mentioned. Personally, I don't really hear it.

"Airline Amy" seems to be based on "Switchboard Susan" by Nick Lowe. This is another one I hadn't heard until looking through TheLazenby's list. At first I wasn't convinced, but there a some similar vocal inflections and lyric patterns, and instrumentally it's close enough. This is a live version, but I think it's easier to hear the similarities in this one than the studio version. And now I have listened to "Airline Amy" way more than I'd like to.