It’s a feel-good story where the perennial music industry clown becomes the king of the charts.
A few months ago, the announcement of a 14th album by the American pop-satirist Weird Al Yankovic was met with a collective shrug. The prevailing industry view was that the talented Yankovic was past his peak. Those in the know, however, knew that Yankovic was stealthily stepping up to deliver his home run.
His previous two albums, the Grammy-Award nominated Straight Outta Lynwood (2006) and Alpocalypse (2011) quietly cracked the top 10 in the American charts and ultimately paved the way for the monster of a new album that is Mandatory Fun.
Out last month, the release became the 54-year-old's first chart-topping album in a near-40 year career. As well as the side-splitting parodies and nifty originals, Mandatory Fun's success was also fuelled by a cutting-edge promotional campaign incorporating multimedia and social networking platforms.
Ultimately, it all serves as a tribute to Yankovic’s longevity, which relies heavily on understanding trends, marketing smarts and straight-out hustle.
Respect the original
There is a reason why Yankovic remains pop music’s leading satirist despite the growing number of online wannabes. He is not simply about skewering popular tunes – instead he manages that deft trick of reinventing the original song while simultaneously paying tribute to its appeal.
Mandatory Fun's lead single, Word Crimes, is a case in point: a parody of Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, Yankovic's ode to good grammar totally recasts the racy song as an editor's anthem. Even with the new lyrics, Yankovic delivers them in a fashion complementing the original track's hooks, thus having the listener singing along to the new set of words in no time.
No wonder many pop artists view a Yankovic cover as an honour. In his hands, their radio-saturated songs take on a new life.
Give the fans something extra
Ever since the 1980s, Yankovic's promotional campaigns never followed the standard format. For one thing, almost all of his albums contained arresting covers, from his 1983 self-titled debut to his now classic aping of Michael Jackson's Bad album in 1988's Even Worse.
He got tech savvy with Straight Outta Lynwood by creating a promotional website (dontdownloadthissong.com) where one could download a track and email it to friends.
His most recent albums, Alpocalypse and Mandatory Fun, saw him embrace multimedia fully. Alpocalypse was released with a DVD of nine music videos of the album tracks and this was pre-Beyoncé, back in 2011. For Mandatory Fun, eight varied videos – ranging from live action to animation – were premiered in as many days across eight different web portals.
The drip-feed strategy, coupled with Yankovic’s incessant use of Facebook and Twitter (he wrote all of the tweets and statuses) guaranteed him a trending position on social networks and set up his album to debut at the top of the charts.
Be on the road constantly
Touring is no laughing matter for Yankovic. Perhaps foreseeing the demise of album sales, Yankovic is a road hound, having clocked up his 1,000th live performance back in 2008. The concerts appeal to the senses – Yankovic and his band perform numerous costume changes and the large screens show the songs with accompanying video clips.
On the music front, a Yankovic gig contains all the hits, some performed individually, others in long medleys. With his penchant for American pop-culture references curtailing his appeal abroad, it was only in 2003 that Yankovic performed outside America and Canada, with shows in Australia and New Zealand. In 2010, he made his European tour debut with a string of festival dates and club shows.
Be in control
With each album keenly dissecting popular trends, it is amazing that Yankovic has the energy to follow what’s going on and write all the lyrics himself.
Then again, he was always a smart cookie – Yankovic was a high-school valedictorian before studying architecture and hosting a radio show at university. His visual and audio flare served him well as he went on to produce and direct many of his albums and videos respectively. In 1989, he wrote and starred in the cult comedy UHF alongside the late Kevin McCarthy.
Save the weirdness for the stage
With more than 12 million albums sold and a seemingly permanent place in pop culture, Yankovic maintains a surprisingly low-key profile offstage.
When he is not working, he is at his West Hollywood home raising his 11-year-old daughter Nina with his wife, Suzanne (they married in 2001). Perhaps the only sign of rock-star excess is the holiday pad on the Hawaiian island of Maui; a coastal sanctuary in which to lay low before all the weirdness starts again.
Mandatory Fun (RCA Records) is out now
