World of Weird Al Yankovic

weird user wrote:One other thing I've recently wondered. Many years ago when I first got this album, I was listening to it with somebody, and when he heard the "won;t you sign on the dotted line?" line, he told me that's another way of saying "kiss my butt" or something like that. Anybody know if "sign on the dotted line" was ever actually slang (or at least popular slang, it's possible a small amount of people thought that way)?

It just means "won't you sign our record contract?" But this entire song figuratively means "kiss my butt" as well, given the sleaziness of the narrator and the fact that the artist will probably be screwed. Knowing Al's nasty personal experiences with record contracts (The Food Album, The TV Album, "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch," the 12 tracks per album rule, the 6 parodies per album rule, etc.), I doubt his opinions on such people in the music business have improved much.

JohnnyLurg wrote: It just means "won't you sign our record contract?" But this entire song figuratively means "kiss my butt" as well, given the sleaziness of the narrator and the fact that the artist will probably be screwed. Knowing Al's nasty personal experiences with record contracts (The Food Album, The TV Album, "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch," the 12 tracks per album rule, the 6 parodies per album rule, etc.), I doubt his opinions on such people in the music business have improved much.

I thought 12 songs per album was the norm for most artists, not just Al. Though I feel his later albums (before Alpacolypse) had many longer songs than before, and each album from 1999 to 2006 had at least one song that was over 8 minutes long. And I thought the six songs per album rule was more of a budget thing, since the original songwriters get a bit of royalties from the parodies (considering Al is not required to get permission, I wonder if the original songwriters would still have to get paid if Al didn't ask for permission). It makes me wonder if Al would put out an album of only parodies if there wasn't a limit on the number of parodies allowed.

An all-parody album (unless it consisted entirely of vintage hits that have stood the test of time) would date itself pretty quickly, and I think Al likes getting his originals out there. Plus many (most?) of the fan favorites are originals.

I don't know anything about Al's contract (although isn't Volcano entitled to a cheesy compilation in addition to the next album?) but are we sure there's a hard-and-fast stipulation specifying that each album must include 12 tracks and a certain number of parodies? My guess is that's more just a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" template he willingly follows. Obviously there must be some sort of minimum and maximum number of parodies (enough to use for promotion, but not too many that it becomes unprofitable), but given that SOL was nearly released with 11 tracks and only four parodies, it probably isn't a strict rule.

I've never really paid attention to the lyrics of this song. Now, after having read this thread and read the lyrics to the song, I have a greater appreciation for it. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.