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 The 54-year-old singer of such songs as "Eat It," a culinary
spoof on Michael Jackson's 1983 hit "Beat It" and "Amish
Paradise," the send-up of rapper Coolio's 1995 sensation "Gangsta's
Paradise," scored his first No. 1 album on the U.S. Billboard
chart with "Mandatory Fun", following a week-long rollout of
music videos. [id:nL2N0PY28A]
"It's still hard for me to wrap my head around that," Yankovic
said in an interview. "It means a lot to me."
Seemingly eclipsed at his own game by the rise of parody and
fan-generated music videos online over the past decade and shut
out from MTV when the network largely gave up music videos for
original programming, Yankovic has survived by tapping into
social media.
"I realized that the Internet was pretty much where my bread was
buttered," said the three-time Grammy winner, whose three-decade
career has been due largely in part to the success of his
humorous music videos.
"I wanted to do something that would appeal to the online
community and things on the Internet go viral quick," he added.
Yankovic released eight new songs each day beginning on July 14
with "Tacky," a celebrity-filled video of Pharrell's
international hit "Happy," which itself has spawned countless
fan videos.
"There was always the danger people would get tired of it, by
the third day I was wondering if people would be going, 'Oh no,
more Al,'" said Yankovic of the eight videos that have so far
racked up more than 40 million views.
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"Mandatory Fun" sold 104,000 copies in its first week, according to
figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. It also became the first
comedy album to reach No. 1 since 1963's "My Son, the Nut" by Allan
Sherman.
"It kind of had a snowball effect," the three-time Grammy winner
said of the videos. "By the end of the eight days there was a little
bit of a Pavlovian effect as well, because when it ended, people
were like, 'Where's the "Weird Al" video?'"
The singer, whose new fare about aluminum foil parodies poor grammar
to the tune of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Lorde's "Royals",
said it took about two years to complete the album and videos.
Yankovic was able to field cameos by actors Jack Black, Eric
Stonestreet and Margaret Cho among others and partnered with
websites such as Nerdist.com and Will Ferrell's Funnyordie.com as a
way to help with its launch.
"I wish I had YouTube when I was starting out," he said. "All it
does really for me is, it means I need to step up my game, make sure
that I can rise above the crowd and I won't always go for the most
obvious idea. I'll have to make myself a little bit more unique."
(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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