comedy

"Weird Al" Yankovic

1 festival played

Five decades of the sharpest parody in pop — accordion, costume changes, and songs that outlive what they spoof.

"Weird Al" Yankovic is an American musician and satirist from Downey, California, who began sending accordion-and-tape-recorder parodies to Dr. Demento's radio show in the late 1970s. His first releases, among them "My Bologna" and "Another One Rides the Bus", set the pattern: note-for-note recreations of hit records with rewritten lyrics, usually about food, television, or suburban tedium.

Alongside parodies such as "Eat It", "Like a Surgeon", "Smells Like Nirvana", "Amish Paradise" and "White & Nerdy", he writes original songs in the style of particular artists, and closes out albums with accordion-driven polka medleys of current hits. He has worked with essentially the same backing band since the early 1980s, directs many of his own videos, and starred in the 1989 film UHF. Live, the show leans on costume changes and video interludes between songs.

comedy