World of Weird Al Yankovic

Hi everyone,

I'm a sophomore in college taking a class called "Pop Culture" for one of my 2 majors (communication) and I need to write a 12-page paper for the class. I knew going in that I wanted to write about Al, because I'm much more an expert on his body of work than any other facet of pop culture at all. But I had to relate my topic to something we covered or read about in class, so I'm specifically writing about "Weird Al" and Parody as Intertextuality, "intertextuality" being defined as the connection one text bears to other texts by allusion, inference, implication or suggestion.

I also need 12 sources, not all of which need to be scholarly (i.e. Newspaper/Internet interviews with Al or articles about him can count, but I need some sources about the abstract concepts as well). Do any of you have ideas about some specific sources I might cite for this?

My paper is due Friday... I'm a silly goose and started it today. But that's not a big deal because I'm actually a nerd and love writing papers. I can bang out a well-written page just over-viewing Al's career. No big deal there. Intro and conclusion makes two and a half pages, and defining intertextuality makes it three. The bulk of my paper will be using Al parodies (likely three or four, depending how much I write) as examples of intertextuality. I haven't put much thought into that, but does anyone have any ideas they think would exemplify intertextuality? Due to it being Al's most commercially popular song, "White & Nerdy" probably should be one.

Don't think I can't write my paper on my own, I just wanted to put it out to the community looking for their thoughts and opinions - I'm doing my own work

Thanks in advance, folks!

CharlesNelson

I would think "Couch Potato" would be good for intertextuality, both because of all the TV shows that can serve as other texts and because of the clever way Al mirrors stylistic & structural features of Eminem's original (be sure to compare the rhymes of the two songs).

Sam Anderson had a good article on Al in Slate a few years ago. Also this one from NPR: Weird Al as stealth pop musicologist. Hope these help!

Orthography Enthusiast wrote:I would think "Couch Potato" would be good for intertextuality, both because of all the TV shows that can serve as other texts and because of the clever way Al mirrors stylistic & structural features of Eminem's original (be sure to compare the rhymes of the two songs).

Sam Anderson had a good article on Al in Slate a few years ago. Also this one from NPR: Weird Al as stealth pop musicologist. Hope these help!

All very good points! Article looks useful too - thanks a bunch!

10 years ago there was a great article about Al in the Washington Post. You can find it here
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here http://www.weirdal.com/links.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; there is a big list of Al-related websites. there might be interviews or something in there that u can use.