Like Rodney Dangerfield, sometimes Weird Al Yankovic doesn't get no respect. Despite the fact that he has earned two Grammy awards, eight Grammy nominations, and over 20 gold and platinum album certifications during his impressively stable two-decade career, and that he's amassed enough material to fill a quadruple-disc retrospective (Permanent Record: Al In The Box), the accordion-playing, Hawaiian shirt-wearing lampoonist rarely gets taken seriously. However, given the fact that he specializes in musical comedy, perhaps the fact that some critics consider him one big joke is the highest compliment they can pay him. After all, how many jokes are still getting laughs after 20 years?

Indeed, Weird Al has carved out quite a unique and comfortable niche for himself as the prince of parody pop; no other recording artist has been able to sustain such a long and varied career by satirizing the songs of others. Though Alfred Matthew Yankovic (b. Oct. 23, 1959 in Lynwood, Calif.) started playing accordion as a small boy after his mother bought a squeezebox from a door-to-door accordion salesman (!), his career in music didn't really get going until 1979, when he was studying architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (his odd persona lead his Cal Poly classmates to add the "Weird" tagline to his name). One day, while DJing at the college's radio station, KCPR, he dragged a long extension cord across the hall from the station's headquarters and into a public restroom (where the acoustics were perfect for amateur recording, he'd decided); there he laid down a parody of the Knack's monster hit, "My Sharona," on tape. The resulting spoof, "My Bologna," would soon become the first of his many hits, and was the first of many food-centric Al tunes (all of which were later compiled on the 1993 collection The Food Album). "My Bologna" became one of the most-requested songs on radio's nationally syndicated Dr. Demento Show (which had previously played cassette tapes of some of Al's earlier, original compositions), and it eventually caught the attention of the Knack's Doug Fieger, who thought the parody was hilarious. Fieger convinced his label, Capitol Records, to sign Al to a six-month recording contract and release "My Bologna" as a single. But after the hype surrounding "My Bologna" died down, Capitol opted not to release any more Yankovic material and let Al go, figuring the joke had already grown old.

At this point most people probably assumed Weird Al Yankovic would be just a one-hit-wonder novelty act, a mere footnote in pop music history who'd fall back on his plans to become an architect. But after a taste of the record biz, Al knew music was his calling, so he persevered, along with longtime co-conspirators Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz (drums), Jim West (guitar), and Steve Jay (bass), who are still his bandmates to this day. After being rejected by nearly every record label in existence, Al finally signed to the independent Scotti Bros. Records., and it turned out that Capitol's loss was Scotti's gain. His self-titled first album, released in 1982, was an underground hit, featuring goofy, gut-bustingly funny parodies of such familiar songs as Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" ("Another One Rides The Bus"), Toni Basil's "Mickey" ("Ricky," an I Love Lucy homage), Stevie Nicks's "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" ("Stop Draggin' My Car Around"), and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'N' Roll" (another food-obsessed number, "I Love Rocky Road").

However, it was Al's second full-length effort, 1984's In 3-D, that made him a superstar. The timing couldn't have been more ideal: Michael Jackson mania was in full force, with Thriller topping the charts for a record-breaking number of weeks, and MTV had become a real promotional force to be reckoned with. Enter Weird Al's parody of Jackson's "Beat It," entitled "Eat It," and its accompanying hysterical music video that spoofed the original "Beat It" clip to great effect. Heavy MTV rotation made "Eat It" a major hit, and though Al's career has ebbed and flowed since, he's never really gone away. He's remained an MTV fixture through his regular VJ appearances on "AL TV" and numerous dead-on music video parodies, and he's racked up more bona fide hit singles than most naysayers probably ever could have imagined. 1985's Dare To Be Stupid spawned a couple more hits in the form of the Madonna parody "Like A Surgeon" and the Kinks' "Lola" reworked as the Star Wars-themed "Yoda"; 1986's Polka Party offered a send-up of James Brown's "Living In America" ("Living With A Hernia"); and 1988's Even Worse returned to Michael Jackson territory with "Fat," a take-off on Wacko Jacko's "Bad" accompanied by a side-splitting video featuring Al in an enormous latex fat suit (which he still wears when he performs the song in concert). After a four-year break, in 1992 Al scored his biggest smash (at that point) with "Smells Like Nirvana" (a parody of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that was personally endorsed by Kurt Cobain), from his Off The Deep End album, followed up quickly with the Red Hot Chili Peppers-inspired "Bedrock Anthem" and the Alapalooza album in 1993. Al topped himself yet again in 1996 with his biggest-selling album to date, Bad Hair Day, the success of which no doubt had much to do with his remake of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" as "Amish Paradise." Coolio was none too pleased with Al's parody (though perhaps the real source of his wrath was the Coolio-like hairdo Al sported in Bad Hair Day's cover art), but this did nothing to curtail Al's record sales.

Al returned in 1999 with Running With Scissors, the first single of which--another Star Wars-themed number called "The Saga Begins," this time set to the tune of Don McLean's "American Pie"--was perfectly timed with the much-hyped theatrical release of both Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and American Pie. The album quickly rocketed into the top 20 shortly after its release, no doubt due in part to Al's near-complete takeover of VH1 (he's been the subject of a Behind The Music rockumentary, a half-hour VH1 video timeline, and a live concert special, and he once hosted VH1's golf tournament, Fairway To Heaven).

At this point, Al is pretty much an institution unto himself, despite the fact that he recently underwent a radical makeover (he shaved off his distinctive mustache, and ditched his eyeglasses after getting LASIK eye surgery) that rendered him virtually unrecognizable. He still attracts plenty of new, young fans (some too young to even realize that "Smells Like Nirvana" is a parody of an older song); his live shows have grown from simple accordion-augmented, near-acoustic performances to full-blown multimedia extravaganzas; and many recording artists who grew up listening and laughing to Al consider his decision to satirize one of their songs a very high honor (the guys from Nirvana said they knew they'd really made the big-time when "Smells Like Nirvana" came out). But it should be noted that there is much more to Al than just parody tunes; in the tradition of his heroes Spike Jones and Stan Freberg, he is a real comedic artist. He's branched out into film with his sorely underrated 1989 movie UHF (which co-starred The Nanny's Fran Drescher, Saturday Night Live's Victoria Jackson, and a then-unknown Michael Richards, who went on to become Seinfeld's Kramer) and by directing the opening-credits sequence for the movie Spy Hard. He's dabbled in TV with his CBS Saturday-morning kiddie program, The Weird Al Show, which featured the one and only Stan Freberg as a cast member. He directs all of his surprisingly clever music videos with a keen eye for satirical detail, and he has also started directing videos for such disparate artists as Hanson, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Jeff Foxworthy, and the Black Crowes. And most important, he's recorded many original songs that are as funny as any of his more famous parodies, if not funnier--note the nutty Devo-isms of "Dare To Be Stupid," the gleefully masochistic "One More Minute," or the maniacally Dead Milkmen-esque, 11-minute rant entitled "Albuquerque" that closes Running With Scissors. So who cares if some people still think that Weird Al Yankovic is one big joke? Clearly it's Al who's having the last laugh.

Discography
Poodle Hat (Volcano, 2003)
Running With Scissors (Volcano, 2000)
Polka Party! (Volcano/Way Moby, 1998)
Gump (Scotti Bros., 1998)
Bad Hair Day (Scotti Bros., 1996)
Amish Paradise (Scotti Bros., 1996)
The TV Album (Scotti Bros., 1995)
Permanent Record: Al In The Box (Volcano, 1994)
Greatest Hits, Volume II (Scotti Bros., 1994)
Headline News (Scotti Bros., 1994)
Alapalooza (Volcano/Way Moby, 1993)
Bedrock Anthem (Scotti Bros., 1993)
Jurassic Park (Scotti Bros., 1993)
The Food Album (Volcano/Way Moby, 1993)
Off The Deep End (Volcano/Way Moby, 1992)
Even Worse (Volcano/Way Moby, 1988)
Greatest Hits (Scotti Bros., 1988)
Dare To Be Stupid (Volcano/Way Moby, 1985)
In 3-D (Volcano/Way Moby, 1984)
Weird Al Yankovic (Volcano/Way Moby, 1983)

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