As a fan of musical parody genius “Weird Al” Yankovic for a quarter century, I have to confess his take on Pharrell’s “Happy” didn’t do much for me. But the Weird One just redeemed himself, and became a hero to legions of Grammar Nazis, with his reinvention of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”
Yankovic is clearly on a creative roll with the release of his latest album, “Mandatory Fun.” It’s the second of a string of eight videos he plans to release in eight days. And he’s clearly stepped it up with “Word Crimes,” his second new video in two days.
“Tacky,” his take on “Happy,” was merely cute. He didn’t even go Southern with it, and we Southerners wrote the book on tacky. But with “Word Crimes,” he has once again done what he does best: Make a wildly absurd pairing between a popular song and a topic, so that the song truly takes on a whole new dimension.
In this case, Weird Al charges head-on into the swamp of bad grammar, incorrect usage and alphanumeric shorthand gibberish that characterizes contemporary communication. Better yet, he takes a perennial source of aggravation and pumps it full of humor.
Where “Tacky” was a one-word joke, “Word Crimes” is packed full of lines about prepositions, contractions and the elements of style, with the pointers flying thick and fast. “Okay now here’s some notes/ syntax you’re always mangling/ No “x” in espresso/ your participle’s danglin’/ but I don’t want your drama/ if you really wanna/ leave out that Oxford comma …”
Check it out below:
Article source: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/07/god_bless_you_weird_al_satiris.html