FILE - "Weird Al" Yankovic appears at the premiere of "Encanto" in Los Angeles on Nov. 3, 2021. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
Ten years ago, “Weird Al” Yankovic made history, as he is wont to do. “Mandatory Fun,” his 14th and final studio album, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It was not only unprecedented for Yankovic, but unprecedented for his genre as a whole: Never before had a comedy album debuted at the top spot.
“I know it feels ironic to decide to stop making albums after having had a number one album,” Yankovic told The Associated Press over Zoom. “But I just like the freedom of being able to really use whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have to be beholden to a label.”
As an exercise of that freedom, and to celebrate 10 years of “Mandatory Fun,” Yankovic has released a new polka medley, “Polkamania!,” a creative cover of some of the biggest songs of the last decade: Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” Adele’s “Hello,” Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Disney’s “Encanto,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito,” Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
The interview, in which Yankovic discusses the anniversary, the new song, and just what makes the accordion a funny instrument, has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Ten years ago, you told the AP that “Mandatory Fun” would be your last album. Does it still feel that way?
YANKOVIC: It does. You know, I got a pretty good sense 10 years ago of what I wanted to do. It still makes sense to me, in that releasing 12 songs at a time doesn’t feel like the best business model for me, because I like to be topical. And if you have to sit around and wait till you have 12 songs, so you can release them all at once, sometimes that means that a few of those tracks are not going to be quite so topical.
AP: And it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
YANKOVIC: I never dreamed it would happen. No. It really took me by surprise, because, as you said, there was no precedent for it. Comedy albums just didn’t do that well on the charts. And the fact that I had a couple top 10 albums, I thought, “Oh, well, great. That’s amazing.” And I saw other comedy artists also have big hit albums, but nobody was making No. 1. Comedy just didn’t do that. So, when I was able to pull that off, against all odds, that was a big deal for me. That was very emotional because I had done something that I just thought was far beyond the realm of possibility.
AP: You’re celebrating the 10 years of “Mandatory Fun” with “Polkamania!” Why another polka medley?
YANKOVIC: Well, it’s several things. I wanted to do it because I hadn’t released anything in a while and at some point I want to be back on the road and touring, and it would be nice to have some new material to play live.
And also, another reason is that over the last 10 years, there are a lot of songs that have been on the charts that, for whatever reason, I didn’t take a shot at. And I just thought that those were missed opportunities. I wanted to circle back and pay tribute to a lot of those big hits over the last 10 years.
AP: How did you select the songs to parody?
YANKOVIC: I started by limiting it to songs that have been No. 1 on the Billboard charts. That narrowed it down quite a bit to begin with. I didn’t do like one song per year, but I wanted it to be pretty spread out over that 10-year period. And (I picked) songs that I thought were iconic and artists who I thought were iconic, with some of the most memorable songs – songs that had a very identifiable, hook to them. And, you know, (there was) a lot of personal preference as well.
AP: Did anyone decline?
YANKOVIC: We heard back from Taylor Swift people right away, which was amazing. Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish, both, apparently were delighted that they could be in a polka medley. The one that we never heard back from was SZA. I wanted to use “Kill Bill.” She didn’t say yes or no. She just never returned our phone calls.
AP: Is polka innately funny?
YANKOVIC: It just very incongruous. I learned that very early on. When I was a teenager playing the accordion and trying to get into my friend’s rock bands, they’d never let me in. They thought it was very funny when I tried to play a rock song on the accordion. To them, everything on the accordion sounds like polka. So, I decided to lean into that idea and start doing polka medleys of rock songs, and people think it’s funny. As the polkas evolved, they started taking more inspiration from Spike Jones, the 1940s bandleader who did, like, funny versions of songs. And he would always incorporate, you know, gunshots and slide whistles and tuned cowbells and weird sound effects. And I started incorporating that as well. So, yeah, the polka medleys nowadays are sort of like a cross between traditional polka and old school Spike Jones.
AP: Polka medleys are a feature of many of your albums, starting with “Polkas on 45″ from 1984’s “In 3-D.” That’s another anniversary – 40 years of that release, which features your famous Michael Jackson parody, “Eat It.”
YANKOVIC: I was completely surprised that he gave me his blessing. My manager, I guess, talked to Michael’s representatives, and we heard back fairly quickly that he was OK with it. At the time, I was virtually unknown. I had one album out that didn’t do that great. I couldn’t believe that we even got his attention. There’s a contract somewhere in the world that has my signature next to Michael Jackson’s signature, saying that, you know, we are the co-writers of “Eat It.” Prior to that, it was tough to get anybody’s permission because nobody knew who this Weird Al was. And then after we got “Eat It,” we had that for ammunition. We could say, “Well, you know, Michael Jackson was OK with that. So why are you giving me a hard time?”
If any one song changed my life, that certainly did, because, I’ve said this many times, but, you know, the day that the “Eat It” video went into rotation on MTV… you hear of overnight fame and it’s sort of a myth in most cases, but it really was true for me. Because right after that video hit MTV, all of a sudden people were staring at me in public, which, you know, never happened before.
AP: Will there be more Weird Al music in the future?
YANKOVIC: Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing. I wish I could tell you everything that’s in development. I mean, several of them are music related. I’m not going back into the studio in the near future to do a traditional album. There may be some more singles in the future.
AP: And here we’re hoping for a reimagination of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”
YANKOVIC: I have to say “Espresso” almost made the medley. It hadn’t hit No. 1, because that was my cutoff. I said, that’s got to be all No. 1 songs – even though my daughter was saying, “Dad, it’s the song of the summer.” It almost made it. And, you know, I actually co-starred with Sabrina Carpenter on “Milo Murphy’s Law,” so we got to be animated voices together.
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A previous version of this story said Al Yankovic’s “Mandatory Fun” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the Billboard 200. It also said “Mandatory Fun” was the first comedy album to hit No. 1. That is incorrect; it was the first to debut at No. 1.
