It’s hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I’ve ever done, so it’s a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.
It’s hard to say, I picked one of my favorite articles for the MAD vault. Which is one of the features of the Magazine so they don’t have to actually pay artists or writers to come up with new stuff.
My process for the parodies is that I get an idea for a song and then get approval from the artist and then go in and record it and probably try to get it out as soon as possible.
In a genre where most of the artists are one-hit wonders, I’ve been able to hang around longer than most “serious” acts. I pride myself in being a very talented leech.
At this point I’ve got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when ‘Weird Al’ wants to go parody, it’s not meant to make them look bad… it’s meant to be a tribute.
I tend to enunciate pretty well. It’s always seemed that my voice is one of those voices that people can recognize pretty easily – which has been a bit of a drawback for some characters.
When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an architect, because when I was 12 years old I had a guidance counselor that convinced me that that was the best career choice for me.
