World of Weird Al Yankovic

You're Al, you're in a time machine, and you went back to the year 1980 when Yoda was written. This time, you manage to get Ray Davies and George Lucas' permission immediately. You now can put Yoda on the debut album. But, you have to eliminate one of the existing parodies to make room for it.

Great question!

If I have to ability to know what I know now, easy answer, I remove "Stop Draggin' My Car Around". It's the least known and weakest of the parodies on the first album.

If I only have the persective of my career up to 1980, then it becomes harder. I can't remove "My Bologna" because it was my first single, and was supposed to kick-off a six-month contract with Capitol Records. Yes, I would need to re-record it for the album, but hey, I'm just starting out here, and no one knows who I am, I need all the help I can get! AORTB just went viral and made me a household name because of Dr. Demento, so no way I'm removing that! I did record at least 3 demo versions of SDMCA, so I'm really high on that song, I want to keep that. "Empire Strikes Back" just came out and I hear they are making a third movie, and "Yoda" got a lot of positive reacton on Dr. Demento Show, I need to keep that and make it my first single from the album. I have some good ideas for music videos for "Ricky" and ILRR and "Yoda" and I heard something about some Music Television station coming out in 1981 and apparently there's not too many music videos so they'll probably play a lot of mine. I'l make a music video for "Yoda" and if that does well, then one for ILRR, and if that does well, then one for "Ricly". Sorry, SDMCA, I'm going to have to put you on the shelf. Maybe one day Dr. Demento will release some compilation of "basement tapes" and I can give him one of my demos of SDMCA to use on that for the hardcore fans.

Dave Al

Ricky is the only song I ever skip on the album but I like the video. It would have to go, Stop Draggin' My Car Around is way too awesome.

I agree with Dave, SDMCA is definitely the one to go. Yoda would be track 1, all the other parodies would go back one spot

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I think I would decide to lose Ricky. Both are about pop culture obsessions. And Yoda would've made an awesome music video and lead single. Perhaps it would've done better than Ricky because he would've been able to play it at concerts too.

I'm with Dave on this one. SDMCA is one of Al's all-time weakest parodies, IMO. Having Yoda replace it would make the entire album stronger. And it would have been awesome to see a Yoda video.

I still don't think there's a video. It would be cost prohibitive. Even for TSB he used Yoda in silhouette because it would have cost too much money

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minnick27 wrote:I still don't think there's a video. It would be cost prohibitive. Even for TSB he used Yoda in silhouette because it would have cost too much money

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I remember Al mentioning something of the sort in an old "Ask Al" when asked about why there was no "Yoda" video.

As for the topic at hand, while I like the song, I agree with the general consensus that "Stop Draggin' My Car Around" would be the best choice to cut. In addition to it being the least (relatively) famous parody on the album, the Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty song is almost inarguably the least famous parody target for the debut album (and less famous than "Lola", for that matter).

Genius in Maine wrote:
As for the topic at hand, while I like the song, I agree with the general consensus that "Stop Draggin' My Car Around" would be the best choice to cut. In addition to it being the least (relatively) famous parody on the album, the Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty song is almost inarguably the least famous parody target for the debut album (and less famous than "Lola", for that matter).

Some years ago I bought the original "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" from iTunes alongside "Edge of Seventeen" from the same Stevie Nicks album. Despite the star power involved and it being the source of an Al parody, I rarely listen to the former song - both the oiginal and parody version are frankly somewhat boring - while the latter has a badass guitar riff (and mentions White-winged Doves), and in retrospect it's hard to believe "Heart" was a bigger hit than "Edge" (#3 vs. #11 on Billboard Hot 100, #2 vs. #4 on the Rock chart). Like you said, least famous parody target on the debut album.

Someone call a towing company. This song is parked in someone else's spot.

avesjohn wrote:in retrospect it's hard to believe "Heart" was a bigger hit than "Edge" (#3 vs. #11 on Billboard Hot 100, #2 vs. #4 on the Rock chart). Like you said, least famous parody target on the debut album.

Superstar duets were the big trend in the early 80s. Nowadays practically every other hit song is a collaboration of some sort but back then people were creaming their pants when they learned that Queen did a song with David Bowie, or Paul McCartney teamed up with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, so it makes sense that the gimmick factor would work in "Heart"'s favor. Plus, I don't think there was a video for "Edge," whereas the video for "Heart" got a lot of play on MTV. But yeah, "Edge" is clearly a far superior song and the best thing Stevie Nicks ever did that didn't involve Lindsey Buckingham.