It's almost like Al was waiting for the next big thing before releasing his album, and it worked, because he followed Nirvana on the charts. He also took the opportunity to scoff at one-hit-wonders like Milli Vanilli and Gerardo (remember him? Neither do I!) with songs like "Taco Grande".
Al likes to sing about food, but one of his best food parodies during this era was kiboshed by the original artist.
Paul McCartney, another supporter of Yankovic's work, earnestly wanted Yankovic to do a parody of one of his songs, but when asked about a parody of "Live and Let Die" (called "Chicken Pot Pie"), he begrudgingly refused, due to the fact that, as a vegetarian, he couldn't condone the eating of animal flesh.
Yankovic, a fellow vegetarian, respected McCartney's decision.
3 comments:
That seems horribly bogus on Sir Paul's part. Did Weird Al get permission from each of the songwriters he parodied? Somehow I was under the impression that parody was fair use and not covered by copyright.
I think song parodies fall under "derivative works". I'm not sure if Weird Al needs to get permission from original songwriters before releasing anything, but he usually does.
Weird Al always gets permission. There was a minor dust-up over his song "Amish Paradise" when Coolio claimed he had not given permission to Al to parody his hit "Gangster's Paradise." Apparently, the record label had said Coolio had OK'd it. Al apologized to Coolio. I'm sure the $$$ in royalties Coolio earned from "Amish Paradise" helped ease the pain somewhat.
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