It fit pretty nicely into my schedule because we’d pretty much finished the bulk of promotion for Mandatory Fun and were just getting geared up for the World Tour so this was a nice time for me to be working on it.
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 don’t want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that’s more my personal taste.
I decided that I wanted to be a voice on every animated cartoon in the history of the world – even shows that haven’t been on the air for a very long time, that’s going to be harder to pull off.
Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don’t make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows.
I think I’m equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the “Letters and Tomatoes” column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.
I do original songs in the style of other artists, where I try to learn all their musical idiosyncrasies and try to do something that sounds like them and yet is a bit more sick and twisted.
I suppose I had my rock star fantasies while I was singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror, but I never really consciously said, ‘OK, this is what I’m going to do for a living and I’m going to be Weird Al.’