World of Weird Al Yankovic

I think what would be neato would be Al made an album, 6 songs in his pre-LASIK(goofy silly Eminem-esque accents) voice and 6 in his natural(serious and normal).

Ooh, a spammer who Googles!

I think a serious album from Al would be pretty cool, but only if it was something he seriously wanted to do. I think he could come up with some great stuff. I've always thought of Al as a wonderfully talented songwriter.

Also, Skipper Dan is probably my favorite song he's ever done, so I'd love to hear more stuff in that direction.

Death metal is the only serious medium I could see this happening in.

It stinks because Al has said he'd never do a serious album, but as a one-time thing I'd love it. If he's leaving his record label after the next album, maybe someday he'd consider a six-song iTunes EP of serious songs, or even a mix of comedy and serious. Like someone posted earlier, Al being "serious" would be closer to Cake than art music, per se. I'd still love it.

No to a "serious" album, or at least not in the sense of him channeling Sting or something. He would never forgo his sense of humor entirely and I would never want him to, anyway.

I would love to hear an entirely original album, though. No song parodies or overt style parodies, just something totally independent of other artists. His music has always had a lot of intelligence, clarity, and sincerity but it sometimes gets obscured by the craziness and the pastiche nature of his writing. I'd want him to stay weird, but I'd also be interested to hear him sing about more personal topics. As weirdojace said, songs along the lines of Skipper Dan which don't have any pretensions of being "important" or "serious," but that have a wiser sense of humor, digging a little deeper, more overtly satirical, and perhaps more clearly reflecting Al's own feelings, experiences, and the world around him. Just the same old Al with the same old band, telling funny stories but simply less of him dressing in other people's clothes and singing about less trivial things. I'm confident he'd totally knock something like that out of the park. He's always had stuff like that in him (especially his "love" songs) and he seems to be doing more of it lately. TMZ and I'll Sue Ya are pretty topical and Why Does This Always Happen To Me? is pretty scathing. I was even listening to Genius With France recently and the narrator is actually a rather sad, funny character when you think about it. The "I'm never going back" section especially suggests a pretty interesting and lonely backstory!