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Weird Al Says "Twitter Saved My Album"
nudnik72 writes "Weird Al's latest album, Alpocalypse, was released today, but might not have if his fans hadn't taken his cause to twitter Al says. Yankovic had a well publicized disagreement with Lady Gaga's management over his parody of her song Born This Way. Within 24 hours of his fans spreading the word on the internet, Gaga's people reversed course and approved the parody, saying the whole thing was just a mix-up. The King of Pop Parodies explains that this wasn't the first time a music label and the parodied artist didn't see eye-to-eye."
A little show / podcast known as "Pop Culture Happy Hour" played a huge part in this as well.
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Al released the entire Alpocalypse album for free legal streaming if you want to hear it before you buy. It's a great album!
I preordered it (got the album a few days ago) and we're seeing a show in Toronto in July. Believe me, he and the band put on a hell of a performance.
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I can't believe a person as big of a publicity hound as Lady Gaga would every have a problem with a Weird Al parody. It means at the very least you've done a track that has hit the public consciousness and that you're famous. Plus she's been on shows like Graham Norton where you're sure to get made fun of in a good natured way.
Probably a goon in the entourage taking upon him/herself to make a decision.
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Coolio's a bitch. Straight up!
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No, not the joke, literally.
LG said that her publicist had never actually sent her the song and just said no. Obviously full of himself unlike Lady GaGa, whom I admire because she is definitely doing this all from the understanding the whole thing is kind of a laugh...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
His career and new music is still just as relevant (whatever level you deem that to be) after 30 years. Not too many artists performing today can say that.
From what I have seen in interviews, etc. Lady Gaga seems to have her head screwed on straight, a lot moreso than self-obsessed legal departments and Elvis-hip-gyration-fearing for-profit TV preachers. She's messing with the social meme-scape (there, I invented a word!) and doing so with intelligence. No surprise at all that she adores Weird Al and would think that being included in a Weird Al album is a high honor for a pop singer.
And, no surprise at all that her label's lawyer-trash didn't bother to talk to her first. From my second-hand experience with label legaloids, they hold the performers in barely-concealed contempt, the fans in fully unconcealed contempt. Dante is not my model of theological thought, but I can agree with him on one thing: Bolgia Nine must be packed with RIAA lawyers and the legal departments that try to chain down the performers.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
so don't do it on slashdot, either.
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I've also heard that he is a Class A nice guy in real life, too. He's like a hero to nerds/geeks/accordion players everywhere.
I was an immense fan of "In 3D", and one of the most notable things about it is the polka versions of classics (Hey Jude, My Generation, etc.) Some of the parodies were pending classics, like Eat It, Rye or the Kaiser, and King of Suede.
But we've run out of classics. Can you really parody Lady Gaga, herself essentially a parody of the music industry today?
Al is a gifted musician; his grasp of style and ability to mimic it are extraordinary: Songs like Mr. Popeil and Dog Eat Dog show a tremendous grasp of what makes the B-52s and the Talking Heads distinctive. Often his original works are funnier than the parodies, especially since parody so often relies on the meat of source material. Today's source material doesn't seem to HAVE any meat.
I looked at the video of his Lady Gaga parody. It's obviously a huge amount of work, and it's funny for that. That kind of effort is what Lady Gaga brings to the table, when the song material is forgettable.
This is not a dig on Al; it's a dig on the music industry, which as we've often noted here is dying, and with good reason. I'm thrilled that Al is still applying his tremendous gifts. I just wish he had better stuff to work with.
What I am continually amazed by is just how large a range he and his band have. They do tons of different styles when parodying songs and do them extremely well.
Particularly impressive are the style parodies, because they are always so dead on. They really can capture the style of a band and create a new tune that sounds just right.
All in all not an easy thing to do, and no small part of the reason he can keep relevant. If he and his band only had one or two styles they could do, the parodies would work so well. That they can take on more or less any band's style and pull it off to near perfection is why a parody he does today can be just as funny as one he did 30 years ago.
Too bad his French is beyond bad.
Peetee = ???
Paytay = Pété
It means "farted" in French
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It could be argued that this was something of a publicity stunt. The song parody was protected free speech. Weird Al didn't have to ask Lady Gaga for permission to satirize her work. He was just being polite.
A recent example of satirical free speech was Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" was sued for infringement of Fox New's trademark "Fair and Balanced" but the court ruled that because Franken's title was a parody of the trademark it was protected free speech.
I love that his album got so much more exposure from the conflict, but let's not forget that parody and satire are constitutionally protected forms of speech. Lady Gaga and the Record Labels lacked a legal foot to stand on in preventing the release of this album.
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Now I'm going to have nightmares about that guys face
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
And I'd much rather sit through his recap of Episode 1 then to try and watch it again.
What I typically do is write a comment, and then copy part of the comment to the subject line. This works for both tweet length comments and multi-paragraph point-by-point rebuttals.
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