A Weird Al "History of Pop/Rock Timeline" Idea

[Big Spoon]

And now I have listened to "Airline Amy" way more than I'd like to.

Airline Amy is amazing. Don't you DARE badmouth it.

[Mystik Tomato]

I've always heard a bit of TV Dinners by ZZ Top in When I Was Your Age.

[Elvis]

Here's something from the Al reddit chat.

Hmm. Well, there were a number of original songs on my first few albums that weren't in any particular style or modeled after any particular artist - off the top of my head, let's say "Midnight Star" or "Nature Trail To Hell"... but that was many years ago and I like to think I've become a better songwriter since then. I guess "Hardware Store" would fall in that category as well - that was ORIGINALLY going to be in somebody else's style, but then I scrapped that idea and made it a pure original.

As I suspected, there are probably a lot more pure originals out there. I know it's fun to try to make all of Al's originals fit cleanly into a style parody category, but unless its blatantly obvious, or comes from Al himself, I always consider that originals to be just that. People tend to group Al's music into one of three categories (parody, polka, style parody), but there is an often forgotten fourth category (pure originals).

If you're still trying to put things in chronological order, for the pure originals, I would stick them in the timelime wherever the album that they were released on fits.

Dave

[minnick27]

This also puts NTTH out of contention for the Elton John song

[Skippy]

The final timeline is not going to include every song. There's no reason to include both "Smells Like Nirvana" and "Callin' in Sick," for example, because they both represent the same band (and even target songs from the same album.) In cases like that, I'll go with the most popular or obvious choice. I also won't be including anything I can't reasonably assign a style parody too and probably not even the most questionable ones. Sometimes songs are just originals and are influenced by the music from the era they were produced in without being purposeful style parodies. And finally, I intend to eventually whittle it down to the most influential and important artists, so while Al is a fan of Tonio K., neither of his style parodies is likely to make the final cut. It's still nice to investigate some of these and see what we can uncover.

[Skippy]

And on that note, I just happened to finish up Alapalooza, so let's get to it! I'm leaving out "Harvey the Wonder Hamster" because it's basically a filler track from the Al-TV days. Since we a new, far superior representative for marching band music, there's no reason to include Harvey.

Now this album is interesting because there are two clear Peter Gabriel style parodies. That's because "Talk Soup" was written to be a theme for the show that they didn't end up using, so Al put it on the album. The other one is obviously "Waffle King." I'm not sure how I'll handle this aberration, but I personally like the song "Talk Soup" better, so...

We also have "Young, Dumb & Ugly" which I did not realize had been confirmed as AC/DC by Al. I swear to you all that I once heard a song that sounds almost exactly like it over the end credits of some movie that was on TV. I don't think I watched the movie, just flipped it on during the credits and heard the song. I remember waiting through the credits to see the name of the song and that it was also similarly (but seriously) titled. I cannot for the life of me track down that song or the movie. I could be crazy. But if Al says this is AC/DC then that's what it is. The guitar solo sounds like (and is almost exactly as long) as the one from "Moneytalks."

"Frank's 2000" TV" is usually just described as "early R.E.M." and guess what--that's what I'm calling it too. Nothing from their early (Out of Time and prior) albums sounds enough like it to call it the basis. Plenty of songs sound kind of like it. This is one of those pastiches where Al just seems to absorb the band's sound and produce a new song in their style without cribbing too much from any one track. It does seem to fit in best with the Document/Green/Out of Time era.

"Traffic Jam" is Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" without the opening sermon. This is indisputable. Unless Prince sues. Then it's totally not that.

Someone suggested that "Mime" is an Aerosmith style parody, and I do hear some resemblance to "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." The vocal style in the verses is similar and the guitar solo sounds close too. Thematically, both songs are about girls with "secrets."

edit: word crime.

[TMBJon]

I always thought Young Dumb & Ugly was a mix of AC/DC and Guns N Roses. The vocal impression seems to be a little more Axl Rose than Bon Scott, but I hear influence from both for sure. What does Al say about it exactly?

[Skippy]

He talks about it in this Onion AV Club interview.

[Good Enough For Now]

Someone suggested that "Mime" is an Aerosmith style parody, and I do hear some resemblance to "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." The vocal style in the verses is similar and the guitar solo sounds close too. Thematically, both songs are about girls with "secrets."

Can you imagine? An Aerosmith style parody directly following an Aerosmith parody. On an album with two Peter Gabriel style parodies.

Although Al has confirmed it, "Frank's 2000" TV" strikes me as a slightly off-the-mark R.E.M. style parody (although a great song!). R.E.M. are one of my all-time favorites, and something about the tone does not quite connect. Someone suggested a Matthew Sweet song that was quite close. I certainly see what he was going for, but I think if R.E.M. are the target it is very rooted in Out of Time specifically. The mandolin break from Losing My Religion is in there, the "over-the-top jangly" bounce of Shiny Happy People (a very atypical R.E.M. song) is quite prominent, and I'd even suggest it sounds more like the two Mike Mills lead vocal tracks, Near Wild Heaven and Texarkana. I'd plant it firmly in 1991.

[Skippy]

I definitely picked up a "Shiny Happy People" vibe too, and was also surprised since that really is like the most non-R.E.M. R.E.M. song there is. (It's their "Soul to Squeeze.") Really all the songs you mention are why I included Out of Time instead of just Document and Green, which is where I had always placed this song in my mind before I really started researching it. I do think that it's kind of a go-to style for the softer, janglier R.E.M songs of that era, so in that way it is kind of accurate.

I feel like this and "My Own Eyes" are songs where, because Al is such a big fan of the original artists, he didn't pick elements of specific songs as much as he just wrote a song in a style he already knows. "Everything You Know is Wrong" is that way too. There are fragments and allusions, but overall it's more like the original artist wrote a new song with funny lyrics.