One of my original ideas, once I got some traction as a reviewer, was to do a discography series, where I review a single artist's albums from their first to their most recent. I even had a few artists in mind: Green Day, Van Halen, Fiona Apple, and so on.
But I decided that that would be too close to what I plan to do with bad albums (and, no, I haven't abandoned the original C2C idea; I just need to get some momentum going; and Covering the Covers and another originally canned segment, Analyzes the Lyrics, will also come in its own time. Please be patient.). As such, I've decided to do something a little different.
If someone else has already done something like this, fine, but I'm doing this just to get my foot in the internet's door, so to speak, and to sharpen my style and sense of humor so the finished product when I do actually make the move to video will be cleaner and, well, exactly as aweXome as my ego demands it be.
Anyway, rather than cover an artist album by album, I'm going to go from song to song, in alphabetical order, doing a short review of each song in that artist's repertoire.
And the artist I'm going to start in on is...
...
Hey, come back!
Meh, who needs them, anyway?
So, yeah. I've been on a Weird Al kick recently (and by "recently", I mean for the past 15 years). And to celebrate the release of his first studio album in five years (and not that bad a one either), I'm going to start at the A's and go all the way down to the Y's (no Z's in this mix), and review each one, starting with the above.
It should be fairly obvious what song this parodizes - or, rather, flat-out ridicules.
Most of Al's parodies take the title or the lyrics, put a completely different spin on them, and makes a completely different song out of the same tune, while at the same time having little to no connection with the source material.
Not so here.
This is one of a handful of what I term "meta-parodies" in which the subject matter of the song is directly tied to the song it's parodying. Other examples of this are "Smells Like Nirvana" and "Perform This Way", both of which I'll get to later.
The song itself is a list of things the narrator would rather do than listen to "Achy Breaky Heart". Now some of the alternatives don't seem that bad to me: I love the Bee Gees and the Village People, and some of Abba's songs are okay. Just about every other artist on the list, fine. Still better than that overplayed fake country-pop-crossover piece of garbage.
After a while, however, he gets into the weird, self-mutilation territory that has been a part of Al's repertoire, especially in his early days. "Tie me to a chair/and kick me down the stairs", and "I'd rather have a pitchfork in my brain." Pretty harsh, yes, but still, arguably, more pleasant than another listening of "Achy Breaky".
This brings up an interesting point that I'd like to mention in passing here: Al seems to have a fascination with things being stuck to, driven into, or smashed against his head and/or face. As we continue further down this list, you will hear many other references to things being done to his face. In fact, I'm going to start a counter:
Things being driven into head and/or face counter: 1
Every time we hit a verse that mentions something happening to his head or face, I'll increment the counter. Let's see how high this thing goes.
There isn't much else to say about this song. It sets out to say ""Achy Breaky Heart" is a terrible song" - and it is - "and I really really don't want to listen to it." And it accomplishes that through the use of parody, which means, in a way, we actually are listening to the song we so rabidly, viciously hate. Oh, cruel, cruel irony.
But then we get to the ending... and it's at that point that the song abandons all pretense that this is anything other than an opportunity to openly mock this song, as well as everyone and everything associated with it. Take a listen...
I mean, sure, the belch sounds and hand/armpit farts in the background during the spaces between lyrics gave it a bit of a sting, but this? This is the equivalent of ending a performance of the original with no applause, and one guy in the back yelling "You suck!"
I hope Billy Ray has a good sense of humor, because I'm pretty sure this was not part of the pitch.
Al: "Hey, Billy"
Billy Ray: "Yeah?"
Al: "Can I do a parody of your song, "Achy Breaky Heart"?"
Billy Ray: "What you gonna do with it?"
Al: "Well, I was thinking about giving a laundry list of songs and things that I'd rather suffer through than listening to it. What do you think?"
Billy Ray: "..."
Al: "..."
Billy Ray: "Throw in some people doing that "Na-na-na-na-na-naaaah" thing, and you got yourself a deal!"
Okay, not a whole lot of material on this first one; the song itself took all the good jokes (and that's a good thing). Hopefully, there'll be more to work with on the next song. What song's up next?
Next up: Addicted to Spuds
...aw, crap...
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