“Weird Al” Yankovic Is Ready To Enter The Digital Age

noah | October 6, 2008 9:30 am

Over the summer, accordion-wielding parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic told Billboard that he was prepared to take advantage of the iTunes age by breaking free from the album mold, and using iTunes to release songs that were more of the moment than was possible during the era of “Eat It” and “Like A Surgeon.” Last week, Yankovic took to his blog (!!) to announce that his first foray into rush-releasing his response songs would land on iTunes tomorrow, although he was cagey about just who would be his target: “I’m only supposed to ‘tease’ this release right now–I’ll post more info about it in a couple days. But I will say that it’s a parody of a song that very recently was (or perhaps still is) the number one song in the country. That would be another first for me–I don’t think I’ve ever released a parody of a song while the original song was still number one!” Uh oh, are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Not that I don’t love Al, but I do wonder if an “I Kissed A Girl” riff is what the country needs at this particularly dour moment, if only because K. Perry needs if anything less exposure and not more, and even if the song were as persona-satirizing as “Smells Like Nirvana,” she would probably interpret the homage as yet another sign that she was just as awesome as she’s deluded herself into thinking. Instead, I’m hoping that he goes the “appeal to the geeks” route once again and turns “Disturbia” into “Suburbia.” Just think, it could be something of a sequel to White & Nerdy:

NEW SINGLE! [Weird Al’s MySpace Blog] Weird Al Yankovic [MySpace]

(PS: Being able to stream the entire Yankovic catalog on demand is almost making me a beliver in MySpace Music. Almost.)