What's Most To Blame For Perform This Way's Lack Of Success

[Teh Dingo]

Look, we all love Al. That's why we're here.

And sure, Alpocalypse debuted at #9. And every indication points to that even though the album will soon slide off the charts into obscurity like all of Al's other albums, that it will see the same "slow burning" long term success of Running With Scissors (Or even the now "unofficially Gold" I guess...Poodle Hat), and it won't turn into another still wallowing in the depths of Al's catalog Polka Party.

By and large, this album's well liked by not just the Al community, but critics (Well, except the "too hip for the room, we want our Bon Iver" ones).

So even when the album becomes another footnote in the history of the music industry, Al has nothing to be ashamed of. Just continue doing what he does, tour, make media appearances...a second single or a new Al-TV wouldn't hurt either, but at the end of the day, "Weird Al" Yankovic is still "Weird Al" Yankovic.

That's the good news...

The bad news?

All that time Al spent looking for a big follow-up splash to White and Nerdy?

Yeah....he's on the brink of still looking.


The truth may be painful to face, but we have to face it. For whatever reason, Perform This Way has been a flop. The best it did was when it saw it's forced release, and the video has done very little to generate buzz. And even then the song didn't even make a dent on the chart. And even here in the Al fan community, PTW frequently finds itself in the middle to lower end of graded songs off the album.

So what happened? Here's a friendly poll where you can rant away.

[Teh Dingo]

I voted for it was a terrible idea to begin with

Just about every pre-Alpocalypse article that wasn't about When I Grow Up (And some that were) were almost demanding Al to parody Lady Gaga. Even Al said he was hesitant. Even earlier this year, we were convinced he didn't want to touch the song, both because of the song's message and the way everyone was expecting it.

I think Al maybe overthought this and got desperate to release the album.

[Big Spoon]

It happened for a lot of reasons. The Gaga Saga putting the song out early, the fact that a Lady Gaga parody was too obvious, the fact that the video was sub-par...

[anthontherun]

I don't really know. It's probably a combination of things. It's not a bad song but for a lead parody, it's pretty unexceptional and may have been a bit obvious. I think the video was more or less well-received though.

But at the risk of being controversial, and I don't mean this as a slight against Al at all but...the situation could have been handled a lot better. He puts the song out there along with a lengthy blog post that makes Gaga out to be a villain who gave him the run-around for no apparent reason. Was it even 12 hours later that we found out the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding? Now not only is Gaga no longer a monster (no pun intended) anymore, but the egg is on Al's face. I mean, we already knew that "Poker Face" was part of the polka, so the initial Gaga Saga didn't exactly add up. I don't pretend to know the music business or Al's contacts for either of these things, but it's not like Gaga bowed to pressure from fans and the media after the fact; she purportedly didn't even know the song existed.

Honestly, while neither of them match up to "White and Nerdy," the bummer is that Al must have been sitting on some solid follow-ups for a while because I think both "TMZ" and "Party in the CIA" could have really made for great lead singles; at least on par with "Perform This Way." Both are incredibly clever and "Party in the USA" was one of the most ubiquitous pop songs in recent years and a song that a lot of people hated to admit they loved (not unlike "I Want it That Way"). And hey, you can get away with listening to the Weird Al parody because it's making a joke out of "Party in the USA," right? The fact that it just happens to share the same maddeningly catchy melody is just a bonus! Right?

[ludovica64]

I think the long gap between the song being released and the video being released accounts for the single not doing as well as it might. A parallel is Whatever You like which was also released without video back up.
I firmly believe that if audio and video had been released simultaneously, the single would have gone top ten also

[TMBJon]

critics (Well, except the "too hip for the room, we want our Bon Iver" ones)

Most Bon Iver fans I know are extremely praiseworthy of Weird Al because they have a profound understanding of irony (perhaps even more than many self-proclaimed Weird Al fans). Usually the ones who give Al bad reviews are the straight-laced classic rock fans who were never part of the joke and still don't "get" the joke that we all seem to implicitly understand.

[TMBJon]

I wanted to vote for Gaga Saga but I couldn't really. I think the Gaga Saga was inevitable for parodying Lady Gaga. If Michael Jackson was releasing Thriller today, there's pretty much no way Eat It would have ever happened because managers would have gotten in the way. I think Amish Paradise and the Coolio incident was pretty much the start of this change. Al has had a problem with releasing his lead single pretty much every time since then. I don't think the only solution is a classic rock Star Wars parody though. There is a middle ground. And that's why I voted Gaga was a bad idea to begin with. As Dingo said, there was so much pressure on Al to do a Lady Gaga parody that it would have been better to just look past it and put out something that he could write at his own pace and finely craft. Imagine if Chamillionaire had asked to hear White & Nerdy within one week's time. Again, the song would have never come out.
I think the trend here is if you try to have the big #1 hit tie-in (Eminem, Lady Gaga), the song won't necessarily be a huge breakout hit. But if you have a finely crafted song by a less well known artist (White & Nerdy, Amish Paradise) it has a higher potential to get popular. As Ludo said above, a synchronous video/audio release of Perform This Way without all the drama would probably have done a lot better. Maybe he should have spared all of the drama and just sprung the song on everyone live that spring as a concert only. It seems like he just got anxious to release his album by the summer.

[Wizzerkat]

I don't know exactly how long everything took here, but just everything about this song seemed to be a rush job. He was rushing to get lyrics done while on tour. Then he cranks out the song in a week/two weeks. Then it's a few weeks later and it's time to get the video done. He rushes to edit while on tour. There is probably time frame stuff I/we don't know about, but it seems everything had this small window of time to work. I wonder, even with this song, if there was more time things would have ended differently.

That being said, I don't think the song is a flop. Unless Al struck it really lucky, there wasn't going to be anything as good as White and Nerdy this time. For the rush job it appears to be, it's pretty darn good.

One more thing. Honestly? I am not even sure why Al jumped through so many damn hoops for Gaga/her people/whoever anyway. I agree with Jon that a nicely crafted song from a "lesser" artist would have been better. Al has a 30 plus year career and 97.27% of artists give their permission willingly. Why waste his time in the first place? I know she's Gaga, but Al's somebody, too.

[ludovica64]

Hmm I think the Gaga Saga has been a useful attention grabber, but yes, the downside was that the song was out w/o video which is instant death. Luckily all the other videos mean he pretty much has 11 (12 soon) "singles" out simultaneously. This forum might agree more or less which tracks are better than which others, but not only is PTW massively popular out there, but I have seen big love for ALL the other tracks individually out there in the Twittersphere. I am glad Al has got the "you gotta do a Gaga parody, man" thing out of the way too.. for his sake.

Al said on Comedy Bang Bang that he DID try to pull PTW, but iTunes were insistent that he release it asap after it had appeared on You Tube. I guess iTunes has major clout... Lets blame them.

[Orthography Enthusiast]

That video has almost 7 million views in 2 weeks!

I think the real problem is that Gaga's diehard fans, while they're not hating out loud on the song a whole lot, probably because of her turnaround approval, aren't adopting it either. I'm afraid Al's original misgivings were well-founded, and the Little Monsters really aren't that crazy about him messing with their anthem.