Mandatory Fun (Album 14) Speculation :3

[Killingsworth]

Speaking of "silly" speculation, I heard the song "Problem" by Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea today and I was just thinking...what if Al made it his lead single, but changed the hook/chorus to "One Last Album" and made the song about this being his last album?

[TMBJon]

Speaking of "silly" speculation, I heard the song "Problem" by Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea today and I was just thinking...what if Al made it his lead single, but changed the hook/chorus to "One Last Album" and made the song about this being his last album?

Every time you post speculation in this thread, I am reminded of how grateful I am that Al Yankovic, rather than Casey Killingsworth, is "Weird Al".

[anthontherun]

I doubt there will be any direct "last album" reference in the title, lyrics, or packaging.

[minnick27]

Especially considering that its been stated hes not sure about anything. He could still press albums on his own. Or he could even be given another contract without looking for one

[drewdy9999]

The Final Album

There's your four out of six.

[AccordionChick]

Lately I've been trying to take in as much as I can from the Billboard Hot 100 to familiarize myself with songs just in case any end up being parodied. I listened to "Fancy" & "Problem" but personally I feel like they seem out of place to be parodied or not exactly, they just to me sound too one hit-ish. They are popular right now but I don't even know if they're songs that will be remembered say even 5 years from now. I have a feeling our lead parody isn't out yet, sadly if it's true we'll have to wait a little longer but I'm hoping when the song comes around it's something awesome that's definitely really memorable.

[Killingsworth]

Every time you post speculation in this thread, I am reminded of how grateful I am that Al Yankovic, rather than Casey Killingsworth, is "Weird Al".

...and every time you respond directly to one of my posts, I always die a little inside.

I don't seriously think the songs on this album will reference it being his last either. I know Al hasn't officially announced that this is his last album. In fact, who knows if Al will have fully made the decision to continue traditional albums by the time this one is even released?

In my mind, the most realistic thing we could expect to happen is Al making a blog post on this decision either as part of an album announcement or months later or so after his next tour (kind of like how he announced the "Internet Leaks" experiment after the SOL tour officially ended in 2008).

However, I do think there might have been more subtle hints in the past year that Al may be planning to leave his record label and go independent anyway. For example, Bermuda posted here about the possibility of all future Al songs being released as standalone singles, Al himself posted this tweet about fulfilling his recording contract and the logos and fine print for the labels have been missing form the bottom of the weirdal.com homepage for some time still.

There may be a good chance that these posts weren't meant to hint at anything and that I just read too much into them. Still, they do make me wonder why such specific details would've been mentioned if Al didn't plan to part ways with his label all along.

[Marko_The_Odd]

I listened to "Fancy" & "Problem" but personally I feel like they seem out of place to be parodied or not exactly, they just to me sound too one hit-ish. They are popular right now but I don't even know if they're songs that will be remembered say even 5 years from now

Yeah. Al only sticks to artists who are sure to have long lasting legacies like James Blunt and Chamillionaire.

Also in my mind, those two seem the less "one hitish" than some of the other summer hits on the charts by new artists like "Am I Wrong", "Rude", or "Come With Me Now". Arianna Grande strikes me as an artist who had a hit last year and seems to be steadily rising in popularity. Of course Al never parodied anything by Mariah Carey, so it's hard to say if he'll ever parody anything by mini-Mariah, her material might tend to be outside of Al's vocal range. And as for Iggy, she strikes me as the type of artist we won't be caring about 5 years from now, but still might have a few more hits in her. Whether or not they are any good, is another story.

Also, if Al's waiting for a more established artist to have a hit, we might be waiting for a while since I don't know of many who have albums in the immediate pipeline. Lots of artists announcing new albums now tend to be already announcing things coming out in the late summer, even fall already. Of course Rihanna could decide to pull a Beyoncé and just drop a new album with no advanced warning.

[bermuda]

...and the logos and fine print for the labels have been missing form the bottom of the weirdal.com homepage for some time still.

Just to be clear about that, Sony has hosted Al's site for several years, and very graciously allowed me access for updates (outside access was unprecedented and believe me, much kicking and screaming and gnashing of teeth was involved in allowing me in!) While the site sat on their server, it had to have all of the legalese at the bottom. Unfortunately, Sony's access was very slow for the one outsider in the system - me! - and was often very frustrating to make updates. We'd already been talking for a few years about moving the site back to a more user-friendly host, when their access suddenly became even more obtuse and time-consuming. A move was clearly necessary.

We finally made the change not long ago, stripped off the no-longer-required logos, and I've got my easy access again. This was done for my comfort level, no other reason.

Bermuda

[Kevbo1987]

In the Demos thread in Ask Bermuda, Bermuda said:

Obviously it was a U2 Polka... who ever heard of a Led Zeppelin polka!? Now you're just being silly!

This response is leading me to start to think we may be seeing a Led Zeppelin polka on Album 14. Then again, Bermuda is the master of dropping little, indecipherable hints that drive us all insane, so this seems a little too easy to me.