25 Years of Weird Al Videos
The first LP I owned was "Weird Al" Yankovic's In 3-D. My first cassette was Cocktail: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. My first CD was Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch's sophomore release You Gotta Believe. And while all three remain great albums to make love by, In 3-D is the only one I still regularly enjoy. Wired has a great piece about Weird Al in the latest issue that celebrates the 25th anniversary of his first video, which was for "Ricky," and makes the case that today's YouTube stars owe their notoriety to him:
But Yankovic isn't just popular. He is also the unlikely forefather of
the infectious, hyperlinked, quasi-referential comedy that's become the
lingua franca of the Web. Yankovic's influence can be seen in the
slow-jam pinings of Obama Girl, the cross-cultural pairings that turn
Yoda and SpongeBob SquarePants into hardcore rappers, and in the nimble
hands of that couch potato who farts out "Bohemian Rhapsody" with his
palms (1.8 million YouTube views and counting). You can even detect
traces of his style in the perfectly metered wordplay of "Lazy Sunday,"
the 2005 Saturday Night Live short that earned
YouTube—and viral humor—its first barrage of mainstream attention.
"Ever since I was old enough to listen to music, I've been listening to
Weird Al," says 30-year-old "Sunday" cocreator Andy Samberg. "For my
generation, he's a huge influence."
[Via Videogum]
After the jump, check out the "Eat It" video.
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