World of Weird Al Yankovic

I thought it would be fun to make a little game/contest to see who can guess the parodies on the upcoming album most accurately. I got the idea from the annual "Guess The Hosts" contests we have at this SNL message board where me and Anth regularly post and I just wanted to apply that premise here on WOWAY. I wanted to post this before the tracklist for the album got released and now that we know the album is officially complete, now is a better time than ever to post this. Anyway, the rules are as follows...

Participants must submit five guesses either by posting them in this thread or sending them to me via PM. The deadline to do so is midnight on Wednesday 6/18.

Each correct guess is worth up to 200 points. That's 100 for the artist and 100 for the song. Each participant could potentially earn up to 1000 points total.

If you guess an artist correctly but Al parodies a different song of theirs from the one you guessed, you only get 100 points.

For example, if you guess "Drunk In Love" and Al ends up parodying "Partition" you would only get 100 points for guessing Beyonce correctly. Same would go for Justin Timberlake if you guess "Suit and Tie" but Al parodies "Mirrors" or "Take Back The Night" instead.

If you guess a song that winds up just being included in the polka medley instead, you would just get 100 points for accurately guessing that song would be on the album.

Since some of Al's supporting/non-lead single parodies can feel dated by one or two years by the time of the albums' release, at least two of your guesses should be songs that came out and were popular between the second and third legs of the Alpocalypse tour (4/28/2012 - 10/19/2013).

...oh, and anyone who guesses Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" gets an automatic 200 points (obviously).

The winner of this contest is the participant whose total comes closest to 1000.

Those are the rules. I, of course, will keep track of everyone's guesses and scores and post the results as more album spoilers are released. I will NOT post info on the tracklist in this thread. I will simply post the scores of each participant here and leave the spoilers in the Album 14 threads.

Now to get the ball rolling, I will participate and post MY five guesses first.

Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX - Fancy
Imagine Dragons - Radioactive
One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful
Pharrell Williams - Happy
John Legend - All Of Me

Good luck!

Good idea. Maybe we should get 25 bonus points if we correctly guess which order a guessed parody will appear on the album. In other words, a guess that "Fancy" will be the first parody would = 225. Might help avoid any ties.

Anyway, here are my guesses, in the order I think they will be on the album:

Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX - "Fancy"
Robin Thicke feat. T.I., Pharrell - "Blurred Lines"
Lorde - "Royals"
Imagine Dragons - "Radioactive"
Carly Rae Jepsen - "Call Me Maybe"

The last one may be a longshot, but I'm calling it as this album's "eBay".

NOTE: there's a part of me that has the sneaking suspicion that one of the parodies on the album will be a parody of a "classic" rock song (Al seems due for one), but I couldn't even begin to guess who the target artist or song would be.

I wouldn't be surprised to see "Let It Go" on there. It's a big pop culture phenomenon, and Al could do it so much better than a Youtube star.

I dobt think Al would get permission, Disney is very protective of their properties. Well at least they protect it from outsiders, not so much themselves

Oooh I've been speculating parodies... Here's my list:
"Royals” by Lorde
"Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton (I'm pretty sure "Thrift Shop" will be in the polka but Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis are a huge target)
“All of Me” by John Legend
“Happy” by Pharrell Williams
Obviously, “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea featuring Charlie XCX

Posted this in the spec thread before I saw this, so here goes:

"Fancy" - Iggy Azalea (of course)
"Radioactive" - Imagine Dragons
"Blurred Lines" - Robin Thicke
"Royals" - Lorde
"Get Lucky" - Daft Punk

For now, my ballot is:

Iggy Azalea - Fancy
Lorde - Royals
Pharrell - Happy
Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines
Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

Really close calls with Get Lucky, Thrift Shop, Timber, Story of My Life, and Roar in the mix as well.
I really don't think All of Me is a contender.

mrmeadows wrote:Carly Rae Jepsen - "Call Me Maybe"

The last one may be a longshot, but I'm calling it as this album's "eBay".

Call Me Maybe came out only two years ago. It seems to be standard practice now that albums have parodies that are that dated. I think it's a long shot too, but not exactly what "eBay" was to "Poodle Hat" as I believe "I Want It That Way" was four years old by the time Poodle Hat was released.

I do like your 25 bonus points idea, though so I'm going to incorporate your suggestion into the game. I didn't even think about what order the songs might be in.

mrmeadows wrote:NOTE: there's a part of me that has the sneaking suspicion that one of the parodies on the album will be a parody of a "classic" rock song (Al seems due for one), but I couldn't even begin to guess who the target artist or song would be.

I wouldn't rule this out either, but then again Bermuda did say that all the other parody titles are based on those of the original songs. If Al tried to do another "classic" parody, he might end up having to give it another "masked" title that clues the listener into the parodiy subject matter (e.g. The Saga Begins, Ode To A Superhero) or else people would be wondering why he would parody that song instead of what it might be a parody of.

TMBJon wrote:I really don't think All of Me is a contender.

Now THIS could also be a longshot but I view it as a possibility the same way I viewed "Fancy" before Al announced it. These are both songs that were #1 on the Billboard charts at some point this year and are rather minimalist keyboard/piano centered compositions that would be very easy for Al and the band to produce.

Thanks to everyone who participated so far! For the rest of you, there's five days left to submit your guesses but I'm open to pushing it back a week to 6/25 if we don't get more participants pouring in. I figure now would be a good time to start a tab of everyone's totals who's in so far and award some early points:

Killingsworth: 225
mrmeadows: 225
AccordionChick: 225
Skippy: 225
TMBJon: 225
yankochick38: 225
The Sporkman: 225
Bruce The Duck: 225
anthontherun: 225

If Al's "big cryptic announcement" this weekend reveals any other artists he's parodying like what happened w/SOL, I will award more points accordingly. If not, I may be more inclined to pushing back the deadline.

TMBJon wrote:For now, my ballot is:

Iggy Azalea - Fancy
Lorde - Royals
Pharrell - Happy
Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines
Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

Really close calls with Get Lucky, Thrift Shop, Timber, Story of My Life, and Roar in the mix as well.
I really don't think All of Me is a contender.

This is actually essentially my ballot too but just to make it a lil different I will switch out Blurred Lines with Thrift Shop

So:

Iggy Azalea - Fancy
Lorde - Royals
Pharrell - Happy
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Thrift Shop
Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

welp

Thanks, Alicia! I'll go ahead and add your score.