"Like a virgin..."

[thewayne]

I drove down to El Paso today (waste of a trip except for one good random encounter and spotting some good photography spots on the drive), The station that I was listening to had an all-request lunch hour. They started playing the aforementioned Madonna song, it is perhaps the first time that I’ve heard said song in its entirety, or maybe my memory purged it from my being.

ANYWAY, my brain started with “I finally made it through med school, somehow I made it through. I’m just an intern, I still make a mistake or two.”

Yes, WEIRD AL YANKOVIC RULES THE UNIVERSE! Not long after the Madonna song came out, he released “Like A Surgeon”.

Amusingly, less than an hour earlier, I’m hearing some unusual guitar chords starting a song and start thinking “Hmmm, that sounds like the opening chords of a Weird Al polka medley.” Sure enough, when they got to the chorus, there it was: “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?” No idea what the name of the song or band was, still, I was amused.

Comments

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

I've run into a similar thing more than once. There are probably a dozen or two songs out there that I remember better by Weird Al's versions than the originals. The one that perhaps still stands out best is "Smells Like Nirvana," which I can generally tell apart from the original only in that I can understand the opening lyrics.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

One of my fav Weird Al songs is Bedrock Anthem. It freaked me when I found out it was actually two songs. I'm listening to the radio and they started playing the first song, and I'm sort of on the edge of my seat waiting for the hard rock to kick in, and it never did. :-)

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Al is a god, plain 'n' simple. I've been lucky enough to see him in concert twice, and the man is just unreal. He does not stop at any point during the show, which is just amazing. One of my favorites still remains "One More Minute," just 'cause it helped me through a couple unpleasant breakups. That and "Grapefruit Diet," which had a friend of mine lose it on the dance floor when it got kicked into the dance mix after the first minute or so of the original song. He doesn't usually lose his cool, but that time he was just GONE!

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you know the backstory to the "Like a Surgeon" parody, so here it is. Weird Al was contacted by Madonna who requested that he do a parody of one of her songs, preferably "Like a Virgin" which was just released and doing very well sales-wise. Al didn't have any plans to parody that song, but how could he turn down such a request? So he came up with "Like a Surgeon", not one of his best parodies but still quite funny.

My favorite Weird Al song is "It's All About the Pentiums". The combination of computer geek-speak and rap could have sounded really stupid, but Al makes it all work.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I did not know that. I wonder how often he has been contacted by an artist wanting to be parodied.

Though I like Pentiums, I'd probably rate Bedrock Anthem and Amish Paradise higher. There's a great song off his second most recent album called Drivin' A Truck (with my high heels on) that I'm quite fond of.

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, that's the only time that he's had an artist request a parody. I learned that during an interview with him, but that interview was before Running With Scissors and Poodle Hat so I don't know if there have been requests since then (especially since many artists consider it a mark of having "made it" to be parodied by Weird Al).

I forgot to mention that another favorite of mine is "Jurassic Park". Not only does it have that wonderful clay-mation for the video, I never thought that anyone would be able to do a good parody song based on "MacArthur Park". Similar kudos for "The Saga Begins ..." based on "American Pie".

"i'm a loser baby."

[joecthulhu.livejournal.com]

IIRC the artist is Beck.