Music Feeds Podcast Episode #93: Weird Al Yankovic

Humanity’s favourite musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic has just concluded his superb run of eight music videos released over eight days in celebration of the release of his latest album Mandatory Fun. The strategy was a resounding success and thirty years into his career Weird Al now has a chart topping album on his hands, something he says he never expected.

“It’s beyond my wildest dreams, I can’t even tell you. I’m sort of overwhelmed by the reaction,” explains the master parodist in the latest Music Feeds Podcast. “When I do an album, I always say and I always believe that it’s the best thing I’ve ever done and I’ve said it this time as well. But for the first time everybody in the world seems to agree with me….It’s by far my most popular album and at this time in my career that’s a bit mind boggling for me.”

Weird Al’s master marketing plan was to release a new video each day for eight days. He kicked it off with Tacky, a parody of Pharrell Williams’s monster hit Happy and followed with videos parodying current artists like Lorde, Iggy Azalea, Pixies and even a rant about bad grammatical habits set to Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines.

“It could have backfired at like day three, with people going, ‘Oh, more Weird Al, no I’m sick of him!’,” he explains. But instead it kind of snowballed. People really responded to the first video and they responded even more to the second video and by the third video they were looking forward to what’s going to be next.”

“It became a communal event. Everybody around the world waiting for the next Weird Al video to premiere so it became a thing.” With the record now topping charts globally, Weird AL is set to begin the Mandatory Fun tour in 2015 and says an Australian leg is very “doable.”

“We’re talking about an Australian tour, we don’t know when that’s going to be but I’ve done three tours of Australia so far and I’ll love to do the next one as soon as possible. We’re trying to make that happen for sure.”

Check out all of Weird Al’s videos right here!

Listen: Music Feeds Podcast Episode #93: Weird Al Yankovic

http://youtu.be/cBIj6xOx0-c

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