- Courtesy of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Facebook page
- “Weird Al” Yankovic
“Weird Al” Yankovic has been part of my pop-music vernacular since before I knew pop music had its own language. Yankovic’s irreverent, good-natured spoofs of hit singles felt both silly and subversive to me. I didn’t fully understand the originals before Yankovic interpreted them, and though I probably didn’t get every joke he threw in certain tracks till years later, his fun-house-mirror version of pop made sense to me as a child—and felt like something I could claim as my own. I’m clearly not the only person who has felt this way, which can partially explain why the legacy of this amiable, polka-loving prankster has endured.
