When it tanked, peaking on the Billboard albums chart at No. Polka Party! was Yankovic's fourth album, after a string of records that rank among his classics. "Christmas at Ground Zero," Polka Party! (1986) (Original) That approach was easy when the album at hand was, say, Straight Outta Lynwood or Alpocalypse, but it took a little more digging when it came to Polka Party! or the consistently good-but-not-great Alapalooza.Ĥ0. (Any comedy catalog spanning 40 years is bound to contain a few punchlines that have curdled into slurs, and Yankovic's is no different.) And I decided early on to pick at least one song from every full-length studio album, just to capture the breadth of work here.
With that caveat out of the way, I tried not to ding songs too hard for aging poorly, whether due to out-of-date cultural references or phrasing and terminology that wouldn't fly today.
I idolized him as an adolescent dork in the '80s, I've known him since the late '90s, he contributed commentaries to a book I edited in 2002, I wrote the liner notes to his 2009 compilation The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic, I produced his Tiny Desk concert in 2010 and I even got to play a tiny role in his effort to secure Lady Gaga's permission to parody "Born This Way" in 2011. Now, a rigorous adherence to professional ethics dictates that I acknowledge a personal bias, in the form of my fondness for the man himself.
Watch our countdown of Weird Al's greatest hits on YouTube.The man has assembled a remarkably diverse catalog, too: There are song parodies, of course, but also originals, pastiches (Yankovic calls them "style parodies"), polka medleys, TV theme songs and even movie skits to choose from. Yankovic's self-titled debut album came out exactly 40 years ago on May 3, so I decided to mark the occasion by doing the only reasonable thing a person who's been a fan for that entire span could possibly do: I listened to all of his songs in chronological order and ranked the 40 best. He's also evolved constantly as he's moved from spare early parody singles (1979's "My Bologna," 1981's "Another One Rides the Bus") to the masterfully joke-dense satires and lavishly arranged originals that fill his later records. That idea helps account for Yankovic's many comebacks: New 12-year-olds are minted every day, and as listeners age into adulthood, they're not likely to leave behind the man who helped provide their gateway into grown-up comedy – and in the process made adolescence a tiny bit bearable.īut that alone doesn't account for Yankovic's incredible staying power. Ask people under 50 for their favorite "Weird Al" Yankovic record, though, and they're likely to come up with the one that came out when they were 12 or 13. Photo Illustration by Jackie Lay/NPR/The Associated PressĪsk random people for their favorite year in music, and they'll often name the year they turned 19.
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