Posted on 07/24/2014 6:37:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After more than 30 years on the charts, comedian-singer "Weird Al" Yankovic earns his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, as "Mandatory Fun" debuts atop the list. The album is the first comedy set to top the chart since 1963, and logs the largest sales week for a comedy album since 1994.
"Mandatory Fun" was released July 15 through Way Moby and RCA Records, and sold 104,000 copies in the week ending July 20, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It was promoted by a well-receiveddaily viral video campaign that launched Monday, July 14. Starting with his parody of Pharrell's "Happy," Yankovic released eight music videos for the album through the week on various sites, like The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, Nerdist, College Humor and YouTube.
"Mandatory" is the first comedy album to top the Billboard 200 since Allan Sherman's "My Son, the Nut" spent eight weeks at No. 1 beginning on the chart dated Aug. 31, 1963. A couple of comedy sets came close since then, including Steve Martin's No. 2-peaking "A Wild and Crazy Guy" back in 1978 and a pair of No. 2 Cheech & Chong titles in the early 1970s.
(Excerpt) Read more at billboard.com ...
How funny VH1 actually did a “Behind the Music” episode about Al
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzwQofyOp30
What were the charts like in the 60s, 70s, and 80s?
Did it only take 104,000 copies of an album sale to hit #1?
It’s funny that the music biz has long said that new album sales are down because of “bootlegging”/downloading.
Does that same excuse hold for low Summer movie ticket sales? Declining tv and radio audiences? Declining newspaper and magazine sales?
I know the feeling. I just don't like the new music. I have 5 kids so I hear it, just don't like it.
Art died with the Impressionists. Classical Music died with Mozart.
Lol! I guess now he is a bonafide artist and not just a "flash in the pan" one-hit wonder....
Agree, well deserved!
He got permission form Coolio to parody his "Gangsta Paradise." When his "Amish Paradise" came out Coolio thought it made fun of his creative effort and began telling everyone that he never gave permission for Al to do it. Al said later, "Well, he is cashing the checks I send him."
Joke songs used to be so good that someone could cover them and make a “serious” hit.
It happened with Rock Around The Clock, Love Me (Treat Me Like A Fool), and Wild Thing. None of those were originals even though they became big hits.
Even the knocks and dings at “hep” music were more listenable than today’s choppp-ppp-pppp-eeededededdDDDDDDD techno-voice processed-dupstep-rapcrap.
Monkeys playing rock and roll in the between episode chatter of Lancelot Link? Still solid songs.
Banana Splits? Songs written by the likes of Barry White.
Weird Al as Hitler on “Drunk History” was hilarious. The funny clip isn’t on the web anywhere.
I found something I didn’t know about Weird Al while looking for the clip. He will not do anything if it involves using a curse word. Pretty rare these days.
There seems to be plenty of room under my rock.
I don't know what a Kardashian looks like either.
And I feel fine.
Consider yourself lucky.
I have the same problem. That said, even though I’d never heard the original version, I loved “White and Nerdy.”
“Gee. Now I feel guilty because I always meant to buy those Cheech & Chong albums back when I was in college in the early 1970s, but for some reason I kept forgetting to do it.”
That’s a drag, man.
I know what Disco Duck is but disco songs and their parodies didn’t age well.
Watch the video for Word Crimes. It doesn’t matter if you know the original song (I didn’t). It’s BRILLIANT.
“He actually gets the permission of the writers and the artists of the song he parodies.”
Just for the record, copyright law does not require permission from the original author/composer for parodies. Al does it as a courtesy to the artist.
“The only two entertainers I know who refused to give him permission were Paul McCartney and Prince.”
Sort of along these lines, Jimmy Page also refused permission for a Led Zeppelin polka medley.
Is that top photo a homage to Obama?
I remember seeing that. They must have really had to scrape to find anything to put in it, given that he’s pretty straitlaced as popular musicians go.
The best I like is “loose”. “Oh that Obama is such a looser. Oh I hate those rappers who wear their pants lose”
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