The latest effort from “Weird Al” Yankovic pays homage to the late “celebrity-panel” staple Charles Nelson Reilly, transforming the Match Game old reliable into a superhuman who can not only swallow German crafted automobiles, he can skip the line at the DMV. (Now that is power.) In case the image above didn’t hint at it, Al here is paying tribute to the White Stripes, and the song is a pretty spot-on take on their minimalist thrash-and-bash style. Clip after the jump. More »
Some things to read while lamenting the fact that you didn’t get tickets to Al Fest…
• The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I guess the extra “l” is for extra lawsuit protection—pity they couldn’t take a similar tack with peoples’ ears. [Official site; HT (?) Ned Raggett]
• Jay-Z’s hatred of Autotune has been great for business, says Antares Audio Technologies VP of marketing Marco Alpert. “We make no value judgments on how people use our product… it’s a tool to be used by the people who buy it, and we’re happy when consumers find new uses for it.” That includes blowing it up in music videos, FYI. [Bits] More »
Trey Songz’ ode to sexy Twitpics “LOL :)” is the latest in a long line of songs to marvel over modern technology as it talks about love and romance; with the emoticon-addled track, Songz (and assistants Soulja Boy and Gucci Mane) joins a long line of Internet-referencing pop superstars that includes Prince, Britney Spears, Todd Rundgren, and Nick Carter’s little brother. There are so many of these songs, in fact, that it would be a crime to not count at least a few of them down—after all, the only thing denizens of the Internet like more than lists are lists that reference the Internet. After the jump, Idolator’s top 12 songs that bridge the gap between the radio tower and the information superhighway. More »
Accordion-wielding parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic is compiling another greatest-hits collection for release this fall, and he wants your help as far as song-selection goes. One song that definitely won’t be on the collection, however, is “You’re Pitiful.” Yankovic’s remake of James Blunt’s mewly, unkillable “You’re Beautiful,” which centers on a guy who takes being white and nerdy to an uncomfortable, Slurpee-filled level, was an “unofficial” “Weird Al” release thanks to Atlantic Records, Blunt’s label, barring its release back in 2006—even though at the time, the singer himself had been OK with the release of the track: More »
Relentless parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic has released his second rush single to the Internet: “Craigslist,” an ode to all the useless crap you can find on the site that helped put print media on life support. Rants, raves, styrofoam peanuts–honestly, all that stuff makes the fact that Al has styled the song after the beloved bloviator Jim Morrison kind of perfect, to be honest. Can’t you see him getting all huffy at a Coffee Bean barista for giving him the wrong kind of milk, what with him being the goddamn Lizard King and all? [YouTube] More »
The other night I hunkered down with a crossword puzzle book and tuned into a local college radio station that was playing a decent mix of mainstream indie and what typically gets tagged as “emo”–a Dandy Warhols song that sounded like an outtake from Further Complications, some Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Rilo Kiley, a few bands who sounded like they would have fit right into the radio playlists of the hard-rock shows I favored during my misspent adolescence. (Although man am I glad that I didn’t have Wikipedia to rely on for banter back in my DJ days, because I was wishing beyond hope that the DJ would drop the band-bio recitation and let her personality shine through, and it never did. Is this common among the kids these days?) Dropped into the middle of that, though, was something that stuck out in a pretty excellent way: A kalimba-heavy track stuffed with nonsense lyrics, sung by a young woman with a meandering, yet pretty voice. I had no idea what she was going on about until a key lyric that made me realize that the song was, in fact, a cover. Of a “Weird Al” song. (No, not “White And Nerdy.”) The clip, after the jump. More »
The question’s pretty simple, although to make things a little bit tougher, let’s say that the songs in question have to be about food, and not sexual metaphors for food. To get the inspirational juices (haha, get it?) flowing, here is “Eat It,” which is, of course, merely one of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s many songs devoted to gastronomy. After the jump, I survey many people for their thoughts, and post my favorite food-related disco jam: More »
The rise of the artist blog as official mouthpiece in 2008 may have been in part because record labels can’t afford to hire decent PR staff anymore, but hey, you take the good with the bad. And there was a lot of good to come out of artists hitting up Tumblr, MySpace, et al; these blogs were really effective at humanizing the vacuum presented by endless paparazzi shots and press releases, whether through “clarity posts,” in which artists put gossips on blast, or posts explaining what life is like when bands graduate to bigger tours, or just posts about how they liked shoes. After the jump, nine examples of why more artists should make a tour stop in Blogtown. Not only is the trip entertaining, its fruits give people like me great material!
Who knew that the names of nearly obsolete… More »
