Newspaper and Magazine Alerts

[TMBJon]

As far as I understand, those lyrics to Born To Be Mild are indeed written by Al. The question is whether People Magazine misattributed the Bob Rivers song to Al or if they -- somehow -- knew about that old song Al apparently wrote in the late 70s.

[Killingsworth]

So far I've found the following:
1) A "Born To Be Mild" on the Bob Rivers site that has the original Steppenwolf lyrics, but sung in a flaming faux-gay voice.
2) A "Born To Be Mild" on YouTube by Ken Norberg that has the Steppenwolf tune but rewrites the lyrics so they're about Jesus.
3) A set of "Born To Be Mild" lyrics that do look like something Al would write... kind of a proto-White & Nerdy. No audio of this. But considering that "Orgy On My Own" finally turned up, there's no reason to abandon this hunt, IMHO.

I found it quite odd that Bob Rivers wouldn't bother with the lyrics. I guess that must've been an excerpt from a bit they were doing on his show. Those last lyrics do indeed sound like Al's comedic sensibility. I just have to wonder what they were for if not a Bad Hair era album (since they do appear to reference home computers and the internet much in the same way "Gee I'm A Nerd" also did around that time...)

[TMBJon]

Bad Hair era album??

"Terminals are waiting
For the data that you'll enter"

Yep, sounds a lot like the 1996 I remember!
I am fairly sure this was a pre-first album parody that never saw the light of day.

[Killingsworth]

You're right, Jon. Looking back over those lyrics, they look like they could've easily been written between 1976-1982. They're not as exclusive to the '90s as "Gee, I'm A Nerd" was.

[minnick27]

Yeah calling a computer a terminal is a very 70s thing to say

[minnick27]

Not a newspaper/magazine, but there is a 3 page article on Al in the 26th Edition of Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader. Its all about artists who have turned Al down. Pretty good

[eplacencia]

Not a newspaper or magazine, but was kind of surprised I didn't see anyone mention (or maybe I just couldn't find it - I looked, I swear) Al's appearance in the wonderful coffee table book, "Comic Genius: Portraits of Funny People." It's a collection of photographs of comedians/funny people and there's a great full-page photo of Al capturing the essence of Jimi Hendrix.

[Big Spoon]

Small bit about Al getting his first #1 in the "Quick Takes" area in the Calendar section of today's LA Times.

[weird_el]

Al in the New York Times

No Joke! He’s Topping the Charts
Weird Al Yankovic Scores With ‘Mandatory Fun’
By BEN SISARIOJULY 23, 2014

Weird Al Yankovic released eight videos in eight days to promote his “Mandatory Fun,” which spoofs Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams hits. Credit Casey Curry/Invision, via Associated Press

At some point last week, Weird Al Yankovic’s Twitter account became unmanageable.

Mr. Yankovic, 54, the proudly nerdy song parodist who became an early MTV staple with Michael Jackson sendups like “Eat It,” said Wednesday that he tries to read every Twitter message from his 3.3 million followers, but that the volume made even looking at his account seem like “drinking from the proverbial fire hose.”

The reason: the spectacular, viral success of the online video campaign to promote his latest album, “Mandatory Fun” (RCA), which this week became the first No. 1 of Mr. Yankovic’s three-decade career. With 104,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, “Mandatory Fun” is also the first comedy album to top Billboard’s album chart since Allan Sherman’s “My Son, the Nut” in 1963. His new videos have been watched a total of 46 million times.

“This is something I never dreamed would ever happen,” Mr. Yankovic said.

Mr. Yankovic’s late-career success marries the satirical approach to music he’s been plying since the late 1970s with the most up-to-date thinking in online marketing — a content bombardment, financial backing by popular websites and a catchy hashtag, #8videos8days.

Videos are fueling sales for his new album, “Mandatory Fun.”
Mr. Yankovic’s plan was to release a new video each day for eight days. He started July 14 with “Tacky,” a parody of Pharrell Williams’s monster hit “Happy” — complete with silly dance and long tracking shot. He followed with videos like “Foil,” a play on Lorde’s “Royals” about the uses of aluminum food wrap, and “Word Crimes,” a rant about bad grammatical habits set to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”:

I read your email

It’s quite apparent

Your grammar’s errant

Because RCA did not provide any production budget, Mr. Yankovic said, the videos were paid for by various partner sites that brought their own audiences, like Nerdist, Funny or Die and College Humor. The gambit worked. Mr. Yankovic’s web stats exploded. On Wikipedia, for example, his profile has drawn 575,000 views so far this month, according to the music data-tracking firm Next Big Sound. On Spotify, Mr. Yankovic’s music was streamed 3,282,937 times around the world last week, up 785 percent from the week before.

To some commentators, the video gambit recalled Beyoncé's surprise release last year of an album complete with 14 songs, 17 videos and a direct-to-the-fans approach. As Mr. Yankovic sees it, the goal was simply to try to get people’s attention.


Mr. Yankovic performing in New Jersey for his 2011 “Alpocalypse” album, which inspired 12 videos. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times
“I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I’m on the bleeding edge of marketing, this is going to be a business model that will change the world,’ ” Mr. Yankovic said.

And he bristled at the suggestion that he imitated anybody. For his last album, “Alpocalypse” in 2011, he made videos for all 12 songs. “I did it before Beyoncé,” he said, sounding more jovial, really, than irked.

The popularity of “Mandatory Fun” also points to the good will that Mr. Yankovic has built up among both fans and fellow artists in his more than 30 years in the pop-culture spotlight. Generations of fans have grown up with his parodies, and many artists see getting the Weird Al treatment as confirmation of success. In a detail that has now become part of his standard biography, Mr. Yankovic seeks the approval of each artist he spoofs; one TMZ video posted last month purportedly shows his pitch to the pop star Iggy Azalea backstage at one of her shows.

“People consider him a touch point of their lives,” said Aaron Borns, the head of pop-rock marketing at RCA.

Born and raised in Southern California, Mr. Yankovic learned to play the accordion and was inspired by the novelty songs on Dr. Demento’s radio show, where he later gained his first exposure when the show played his homemade recordings. His parody style took shape in 1979, when “My Bologna,” a version of the Knack’s hit “My Sharona,” was released by Capitol Records, and by the early 1980s Mr. Yankovic and his videos were embraced by the nascent MTV network.

To some extent, the achievement of “Mandatory Fun” is a function of the music industry’s continuing woes, as the number of copies sold to reach No. 1 keeps getting smaller. Also this week, Jason Mraz’s “Yes!” (Atlantic) opened at No. 2 with 81,000 sales; Rise Against bowed at No. 3 with 53,000 copies of its new “The Black Market” (Interscope); and “Kidz Bop 26” (Razor & Tie), the latest installment of a series of toddler-friendly versions of pop hits, opened at No. 4 with 46,000 sales.

So far this year, album sales are down 15 percent compared with the same point last year, and sales of individual tracks are down 13 percent. Mr. Yankovic seemed acutely aware of the industry’s struggles and planned his marketing blitz accordingly.

“For the last decade and a half, the music industry has been in sort of a free fall, with everybody trying different things to see what works,” he said. “I just thought this is a good idea that makes the most sense. Let’s give it a shot, and see if it works.”

[mellow weasel]

It's nice how they keep referring to him as "Mr. Yankovic" . So unusual , or at least much more unusual than seeing his name misspelled in some way...