World of Weird Al Yankovic

I thought it would be fun to make a little game/contest to see who can guess the songs on the "Mandatory Fun" polka 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 "Mandatory Fun" got released and now that we know that much about the album, now is a better time than ever to post this. Anyway, the rules are as follows...

Participants must submit up to fourteen guesses (no more) either by posting them in this thread or sending them to me via PM. The deadline to do so is midnight on Friday 6/27.

Each correct guess is worth up to 100 points. That's 50 for the artist and 50 for the song. Each participant could potentially earn up to 1400 points total.

If you guess an artist correctly but Al polkas a different song of theirs from the one you guessed, you only get 50 points.

For example, if you guess "Drunk In Love" and Al ends up parodying "Partition" you would only get 50 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.

You ARE definitely allowed to use the same guesses for artist, song or both here that you may have used in the "Guess The Parodies" game (just for the sake of having your bases covered)

If you guess a song that winds up just being parodied instead, you would just get 50 points for accurately guessing that song would be on the album.

Since most of Al's polka material 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).

As per Jon's suggestion, each participant gets 50 bonus points if they guess the first and last songs correctly. Participants also get 25 bonus points for each song they guess that appear consecutively in the polka medley in the same order as they originally guessed. I decided to scrap the Meadows rule from the "guess the parodies" game in favor of this.

The winner of this contest is the participant whose total comes closest to 1400.

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 fourteen guesses first.

One Direction - Best Song Ever
Nicki Minaj - Starships
Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
Of Monsters And Men - Little Talks
Robin Thicke feat. T.I.and Pharell - Blurred Lines
Daft Punk feat. Pharell Williams - Get Lucky
Beyonce feat. Jay-Z - Drunk In Love
Lorde - Royals
The Lumineers - Ho Hey
Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up)
Gotye feat. Kimbra - Somebody That I Used To Know
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz- Thrift Shop
Selena Gomez - Come and Get It
Capital Cities - Safe And Sound


Good luck!

I don't know enough popular music to make a full list, but here are some that I think are likely, in no particular order. Sorry if I spell the artists incorrectly or don't know them. I don't feel like looking them all up right now.

Thrift Shop - Maclemore
Gangnam Style - Psy
Forget You - Cee Lo
Happy - Pharell Williams
All of Me - John Legend
Wrecking Ball - Miley Cyrus
Harlem Shake - ??
Call Me Maybe - ??

Never would have thought of "Harlem Shake" but I actually could see that opening the polka ala "Loser" or "Cradle of Love," where it starts off straightforward before the accordion kicks in. I'll do a full list soon.

That's what I was thinking, anth. It could start normal, and then at the breakdown after "Do the Harlem Shake", it could switch into polka style.

Bruce the Duck wrote:That's what I was thinking, anth. It could start normal, and then at the breakdown after "Do the Harlem Shake", it could switch into polka style.

It's funny that Al has actually already changed the lyrics of a song to "do the Harlem polka"...

TMBJon wrote:

Bruce the Duck wrote:That's what I was thinking, anth. It could start normal, and then at the breakdown after "Do the Harlem Shake", it could switch into polka style.

It's funny that Al has actually already changed the lyrics of a song to "do the Harlem polka"...

Ha! Hadn't even thought of that. And actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Harlem Polka is the name of the medley. Of course that fad was over a year ago, so I don't know if it would have been fresh enough when Al wrote the polka.

My girlfriend and I have our own little contest against each other for the polka medley Here are my guesses...

1. Story Of My Life by One Direction
2. We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus
3. Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz
4. Suit & Tie by Justin Timberlake & Jay-Z
5. Get Lucky by Daft Punk feat. Pharrell
6. Radioactive by Imagine Dragons
7. Swimming Pools (Drank) by Kendrick Lamar
8. Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen
9. Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye feat. Kimbra
10. Moves Like Jagger by Maroon5 feat. Christina Aguilera
11. Started From The Bottom by Drake
12. Talk Dirty by Jason Derulo feat. 2 Chainz
13. We Are Young by Fun.
14. Gangnam Style by Psy

I'm a little surprised that nobody suggested turning Gangham Style into Polka Style.

I feel like we'll have a better chance of hearing "Polka Gangnam Style" than "Do The Polka Shake" on this one. In 2014, it seems like the Harlem Shake is viewed more as "old news" than Gangman Style (which surprisingly came into the public consciousness earlier).

I just feel like more people have forgotten the Harlem Shake than Gangman Style (especially since the release of "Gentleman" has allowed PSY to add onto his fifteen minutes).

Killingsworth wrote:I feel like we'll have a better chance of hearing "Polka Gangnam Style" than "Do The Polka Shake" on this one. In 2014, it seems like the Harlem Shake is viewed more as "old news" than Gangman Style (which surprisingly came into the public consciousness earlier).

I just feel like more people have forgotten the Harlem Shake than Gangman Style (especially since the release of "Gentleman" has allowed PSY to add onto his fifteen minutes).

You may be right, but you also have to consider when Al wrote the song. He likely wrote the polka in the back end of 2013 based on the recording dates, and so Harlem Shake hadn't been that long ago at the time.

And actually, I kind of doubt that he'd use either one of them as the basis for the TITLE of the polka. The only time a pollka's title has been from a single one of the songs included was with "Polka Face" (although one could argue that "Polka Power" was based on the Spice Girls' Girl Power slogan), which was so obvious a title for the polka that Al probably just couldn't pass it up. Gangnam Polka and Harlem Polka don't work quite as perfectly. However I think both are very likely candidates for the polka medley.