Mandatory Fun

The King is back

This past Tuesday Weird Al Yankovic dropped his 14th studio album, Mandatory Fun. I picked it up, because Weird Al is one of those artists that I still buy a physical CD for. Let me say, it is SUPER AWESOME!! It's comprised of typical Weird Al fair, you have the parodies, his own written songs and of course the mandatory polka song with a mash up of recent pop hits.




Weird Al is probably the longest running artist that I have listened to. I have memories of listening to cassettes of his Jurassic Park themed Alapalooza and trying to dub over the tape with my own verses. Even now, when I hear a song that he has parodied I still sing his version. Whether it's Gump, Living in the Fridge, Amish Paradise, White & Nerdy...the list goes on.

If you don't follow Al on twitter then you are missing out on his #8videos8days. A brand new video every day for 8 days. Brilliant marketing, made even more brilliant by how he is sharing the videos. Every release so far has been hosted by a different source. Weird Al, sharing the wealth.

Monday we were given "Tacky", parodied from Pharrell's infectious "Happy". This video is chock full of cameos; Margaret Cho, Aisha Tyler, Eric Stonestreet, Kristen Schaal, and Jack Black. I can only imagine how much fun that video would have been to work on. Nerdist was granted the top spot for hosting the opening act of Al's #8videods8days.

Weird Al's VEVO YouTube page was the host of Tuesday's video, "Word Crimes". Parodied from Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines". This is probably my most favorite song on the album. If you are any kind of a grammar Nazi or a language snob this is a brilliant song.

Wednesdays conspiracy themed "FOIL" was hosted on YouTube by College Humor. It is parodied from Lorde's "Royals" and features comedy nerd Patton Oswalt.

Yahoo! Screen (who knew that was a thing?) was the host of Thursday's video, "Handy". Parodied from one of my current favorite pop songs, Iggy Azalea's "Fancy".

So far I love all of the videos released and have a few ideas of what's to come. Here's to another four days of mandatory fun!