- yesterday
Weird Al tries to guess lyrics from some of his most popular songs. He talks debuting his first songs on the Dr. Demento Show, attributes Michael Jackson for "giving him his career," and shares details for his upcoming tour.
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00:00That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me.
00:03I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream.
00:07Don't want no Cap'n Crunch.
00:09Don't want no Raisin Bran.
00:11Ham on, ham on, ham on whole wheat.
00:14Yay!
00:20All right.
00:22But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine,
00:26then tonight we're going to party like it's $16.99.
00:30That's got to be Amish Paradise.
00:32Did I get them all?
00:36Yes! Yes!
00:37Oh, I'm so happy.
00:39Oh, this is great.
00:41But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine,
00:44then tonight we're going to party like it's $16.99.
00:47Amish Paradise.
00:49Coolio had a huge hit with Gangsta's Paradise.
00:52It was number one on the charts for several weeks.
00:54And I thought, oh, this is a great song.
00:55And what can I do with this?
00:57I was trying to think how I could tackle Gangsta's Paradise.
01:02And then I flashed on the idea that the Amish lifestyle
01:05is the direct polar opposite of the Gangsta lifestyle.
01:08And I thought I could probably have some fun with that.
01:10And the video was a lot of fun.
01:11We looked at possibly shooting the video in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
01:14in Amish country.
01:16And it would have been too expensive to fly everybody out and do that.
01:19So we we shot that somewhere in Southern California, you know,
01:23with the rolling hills instead of the flat, you know, Amish country.
01:27And I got all of my relatives to be in it to be extras because, you know,
01:30music video budgets are not that much.
01:32So you try to pull in favors wherever you can.
01:34So we did that.
01:35It was a lot of fun.
01:35I did that one scene where the end of the video where I'm walking backwards.
01:40Well, I'm walking forwards in the video, but I had to walk backwards when we were shooting it
01:44because I had to memorize that lyric backwards and lip sync to it backwards.
01:48It was a very technical thing, but it kind of worked out.
01:51I'm surprised we pulled it off.
01:53Oh, there's more.
01:54Oh, you were hiding them.
01:55I thought that was the end.
01:55No.
01:56Oh, then you have a whole stack.
01:57Oh, okay.
01:59That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me.
02:04Beautiful lyric.
02:05Beautiful.
02:07That's from Albuquerque.
02:08That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me.
02:11My longest song, it's about 11 and a half minutes long.
02:14It's the last track on, I believe, Running With Scissors.
02:19And I wrote that song because I wanted to make the most annoying song of the world.
02:23I just wanted to write a song that just went on forever.
02:26A real shaggy dog story, just with no real point to it.
02:30You know, I just, I was kind of trolling my fans and I thought it's going to be the last
02:34song on the album because people will listen to it once, maybe.
02:38And then never again, they will never ever want to listen to that song again.
02:42And the irony is, it's one of my most popular songs with the fans.
02:47The people that I think influenced me the most were the people that I was exposed to through
02:51the Dr. Demento show.
02:52For the people that don't know, Dr. Demento has been on the radio and now on the internet for many years.
02:58But, you know, in the days before YouTube, before TikTok, before any kind of social media,
03:03there was no way for an idiot like me to get played on the radio or be exposed to a national audience.
03:09But Dr. Demento, you know, played things that I recorded in my bedroom and recorded on a little tiny cassette tape recorder.
03:14He gave me exposure when literally nobody else in the universe would.
03:18And it kind of blew my mind because, you know, I was, you know, getting my song played on the radio.
03:22It was crazy.
03:23The first single that got released nationally was My Bologna.
03:27I was a teenager at the time, but I was in college.
03:30My Bologna was the first real hit on the Demento show.
03:32And the version that Capitol Records released was a bathroom recording, literally.
03:38I recorded that in the men's bathroom across the hall from my campus radio station
03:42because I couldn't afford a real recording studio.
03:44And the bathroom had these beautiful tiled walls for that nice, warm reverb sound.
03:49So, and that's my first single, bathroom recording as a teenager.
03:52Okay, let's see if this works.
03:54Variety.
03:55Oh, there it is.
03:56It's on the other side.
03:57Oh, this is a tough one.
03:59I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream.
04:03I was in AV Club and Glee Club and even the chess team.
04:07I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is from White and Nerdy.
04:10Did I get it?
04:12What do I win?
04:13I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream.
04:16I was in AV Club and Glee Club and even the chess team.
04:19Well, White and Nerdy was my highest charting single.
04:22It was a top 10 single, made it all the way up to number nine.
04:25And my only platinum-selling single sold over a million units.
04:29A lot of people still, you know, think that I peaked with Eat It.
04:31But White and Nerdy actually was in fact my biggest single.
04:34And yeah, that was a fun video to shoot.
04:36We shot for two or three days.
04:38Got a lot of my friends in there.
04:39A lot of people are just right now discovering that Key and Peele were in the video.
04:43You know, because they were not, you know, as popular then as they wound up being.
04:48So they'd be watching the video, this 20-year-old video and going like,
04:51It's Key and Peele!
04:53You know, which is really fun.
04:54What do I do with this?
04:55Do I just, woo!
04:56I love fun.
04:58Oh boy.
05:00Easy enough.
05:03Don't want no Cap'n Crunch.
05:05Don't want no Raisin Bran.
05:07I know it's spelled correctly here, Cap'n Crunch.
05:09I think I say Captain Crunch.
05:11I know the song that I've been, I've been reprimanded.
05:14No, it's Cap'n.
05:15Not Captain.
05:16Cap'n.
05:17Of course from Eat It, my first big hit, international hit.
05:20Kind of got the ball rolling with my career.
05:23And thanks to Michael Jackson for giving me his blessing and letting me do this and basically
05:28giving me a whole career.
05:30Yeah.
05:31Don't want no Cap'n Crunch.
05:32Don't want no Raisin Bran.
05:34I met Michael Jackson a couple of times.
05:35Very briefly, I got to go to one of his videotapings and I also got to go backstage at one of his
05:41concerts and very nice guy, kind of, you know, soft-spoken.
05:44And I actually got to give him a gold album, which I'm sure he didn't need another gold
05:49album.
05:50But, you know, my album, even worse, had me on the cover in the buckle jacket like Michael
05:53Jackson.
05:54And, you know, I wanted to, you know, give my thanks.
05:56So I presented that to him and he was very nice and he smiled and I'm sure he went home
06:00and just threw it on the pile of gold records.
06:03Okay.
06:06Ham on, ham on, ham on whole wheat.
06:10Well, it's a Michael Jackson rock block, isn't it?
06:12This is from the song Fat.
06:18My song about body positivity.
06:21And that was a fun video to do.
06:23I got to expand to 800 pounds in the video.
06:26And this is before CGI.
06:28So it was done with all of the practical effects.
06:30Instead of like using the computer to expand my face, that was actually latex bladders that
06:34were taped to my face, which had to be expanded through straws.
06:38There were actually like special effects guys on the floor out of camera shot blowing through
06:43straws and physically expanding my face.
06:45So that was that was unusual.
06:48We did several takes of my face expanding.
06:51And for the last take, I said, just keep blowing till my face literally explodes, which
06:56it did.
06:56And that was the take we used.
06:58We used it up until the very frame where my face blew up.
07:03Michael Jackson was very supportive.
07:05He allowed me to do both eat it and fat.
07:07And for the fat video that was on Michael Jackson's subway set, he shot the actual bad
07:12video on a on a real New York subway.
07:14But he recreated that on a soundstage in Culver City, California with kids for his Moonwalker
07:19home video release.
07:20And they were just about to strike it.
07:22They're going to tear the whole set down.
07:24And I said, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
07:26I'm doing this video.
07:27Can I please use your set?
07:28And they were kind enough to let me do that.
07:30Oh, boy, this is so fun.
07:34All your friends are laughing behind your back.
07:38Kill them.
07:40That sounds like a horoscope.
07:41So I'm going to say your horoscope for today.
07:45Yay!
07:47All your friends are laughing behind your back.
07:51Kill them.
07:52A music video was just made of this song.
07:55The song itself is at least a decade or so old.
07:58And there was a new animated video made for it, which was really great.
08:02This song is inspired by the horoscopes from The Onion, which I was a big fan of, and also
08:08by horoscopes from Gary Owens.
08:09He used to do, like, funny horoscopes.
08:11So it's a song full of just dumb, funny horoscopes.
08:17Okay.
08:18In the bathroom, I sit and I wait and I sweat and I clench and I'll feel the pain.
08:26Ooh, this is very dramatic.
08:28I'm going to say this is a complicated song.
08:32You know, the Avril Lavigne song, Complicated, was a big hit, and I wanted to do something
08:45with it.
08:46And I had all these different ideas about what direction I could go with it.
08:50And I didn't like one well enough to do a whole song about it, so I had each verse be,
08:55like, a different thing.
08:56And the first verse was about being constipated, so that's where this comes from.
09:04Oh, thank you.
09:06And I forgot the next verse, oh well, I guess it pays to rehearse.
09:10The lyric sheet's so hard to find, what are the words, oh never mind.
09:15That would be Smells Like Nirvana.
09:16And I forgot the next verse, oh well, I guess it pays to rehearse.
09:25I remember one of the lyrics on the song, It's Hard to Bargle Nottle Zouse with all those
09:29marbles in my mouth.
09:30I remember thinking of the phrase, Bargle Nottle Zouse at, like, 3 o'clock in the morning
09:35and writing it down and saying, I gotta remember that in the morning, Bargle Nottle Zouse.
09:39That's important.
09:40I gotta put that in the song.
09:43Smells Like Nirvana came out at the perfect time, because I was going through kind of
09:46a dry stretch.
09:47My first movie, UHF, had come out in 1989, and it flopped spectacularly.
09:52It didn't do well at the box office, and the stink of failure was on me.
09:56And it took a while to kind of get my mojo back, and I was waiting for the right song to
10:00come along.
10:01But then Nirvana came along, and you know, the voice of a generation.
10:05And a once-on-a-lifetime opportunity, and at first I thought, oh, I love this band.
10:09They're great.
10:10They're not going to get popular enough for me to do a parody.
10:12And then their album shot to number one, I thought, okay, now's the time.
10:15I met Kurt a few times.
10:17I ran into him at a restaurant, and I just said, I'm so thankful for everything you've
10:21done for me.
10:22If there's anything I can do for you, just let me know.
10:25And he said, paint my nails.
10:28And I didn't have any nail polish with me, but I gave him a rain check on it.
10:34Okay.
10:35We only torture the folks we don't like, you're probably going to be okay.
10:41You're going to be okay.
10:42I don't know.
10:43People say that's a political song.
10:44I don't know.
10:45I'm just, I'm just telling it like it is, man.
10:46All right.
10:47So we took him there, and we told the tale how his midi-chlorians were off the scale,
11:04and he might fulfill that prophecy.
11:08That's from The Saga Begins, my second Star Wars-inspired parody.
11:12So we took him there, and we told the tale how his midi-chlorians were off the scale.
11:20I wrote that song before the movie actually came out, which I don't know if you could
11:24do that today because I think security's tightened up.
11:26But at the time, I don't know if these fans were going through George Lucas's trash can
11:31or what.
11:32But I basically was able to piece together the plot of the first Star Wars movie from
11:37online rumors.
11:38So I wrote the song, my song, based on those internet rumors.
11:42I watched the movie at a benefit screening, and it was like, yeah, about 99% accurate.
11:47So yeah, go ahead.
11:52Better give me all your gauze, nurse.
11:54This patient's fading fast.
11:57Complications have set in.
11:59Don't know how long he'll last.
12:01That would be like a surgeon.
12:02A lot of people don't understand that line.
12:04I guess they didn't enunciate well enough.
12:06They're like, what are gauze, nurse?
12:08Give me your gauze, nurse?
12:10What's a gauze, nurse?
12:12Sorry.
12:13Sorry.
12:14Better give me all your gauze, nurse.
12:18This patient's fading fast.
12:23All right.
12:25There's a suitcase poking me in the ribs.
12:28There's an elbow in my ear.
12:30There's a smelly old bum standing next to me.
12:33He hasn't showered in a year.
12:35That's from one of my very first singles, Another One Rides the Bus.
12:39There's a suitcase poking me in the ribs.
12:41There's an elbow in my ear.
12:42There's a smelly old bum standing next to me.
12:44He hasn't showered in a year.
12:46It was recorded live on the Dr. DeManto show.
12:48We didn't go into a studio for it.
12:49That was one of those things where I was hanging out with Dr. DeManto.
12:51And he said, you want to come on my show tonight?
12:53I said, sure.
12:54And I brought my accordion.
12:55And I said, hey, I wrote a brand new song, which I wrote like in 20 minutes that day.
13:00He said, I'll play it on the air.
13:01And thankfully, he hit the record button.
13:04He made an air check of that performance.
13:06And I'm glad he did because that's the only existing recording of that song.
13:10We just did it live on the air.
13:11I was still in college at the time.
13:13And by the time I got back to college, it was already going viral.
13:17The show was syndicated around the country.
13:19And then it was bootlegged around the world.
13:21And then finally, TK Records put it out.
13:24That was Casey and the Sunshine Band's label.
13:26They put it out about two weeks before they went entirely bankrupt.
13:31So it sold at least a dozen copies.
13:33I'm not sure how many, but it did not do that well.
13:35Because they were in the process of going out of business.
13:38I didn't have a five-year plan or a 10-year plan.
13:40I mean, I was amazed that I got a record deal.
13:43And I'm amazed to this day that I still get to do this.
13:46I'm leaving directly from here to the airport.
13:48Going to Las Vegas to start the bigger and weirder 2025 tour.
13:52Very excited about it.
13:53It's a three and a half month tour.
13:55It's an international tour.
13:56It's the United States and Toronto.
13:58So it's worldwide.
14:00Playing all the hits.
14:01Playing several things we've never played before live.
14:04And we're playing bigger venues than we've ever played.
14:06Playing Madison Square Garden.
14:07Playing The Forum in LA.
14:08Kind of blowing my mind.
14:09So I'm really looking forward to it.
14:11It's crazy because, you know, people that do funny music are usually not...
14:15They don't usually hang around very long.
14:17Which is why it was hard for me to get a record deal back in 1982.
14:20So it's, yeah, I'm grateful every day that I wake up and I still get to, you know, do this.
14:25Do this.
14:26Do this.
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