World of Weird Al Yankovic

I don't know that I agree entirely with that, Kevbo. I enjoyed "Toothless People" and "King of Suede" long before I knew what they were parodies of (before the Internet). Nowadays I try to be as informed as possible about the originals, but I could see being able to enjoy the parodies even if I didn't hear the original.

ON the other hand, there are certain things in a parody that sometimes work better if you're familiar with the original. Such as the "W-H-I-M" and "Express Yourself" lines in "Perform This Way," and the entire premise of "Confessions Part III" and "Whatever You Like."

I'm with Jeremy. However, while you don't need to know the source material, it certainly can help.

You can enjoy parodies without knowing the targets, but you need to know them for polka medley, because otherwise it's not funny, it's just... polka.

I would agree with that. It's especially helpful with songs like "Down with the Sickness" and "Closer", which are about as far removed from polka music as you can get. Some of the early polkas that came out before I was a fan (45s, Hooked, Party) had a lot of songs that I didn't know and so I didn't appreciate them as much. "Polka Your Eyes Out" was first polka that I really appreciated fully because it was composed almost entirely of music that my 13-year-old self was very familiar with.

I'm looking forward to this polka even more than most, because this is the first time in a very long time I've been plugged into pop music enough to likely recognize over 50% of the material. I have SongPop to thank for that, though.

Alpocalypse was the first album where I was completely familiar with all of the parody and polka targets beforehand thanks to Todd in the Shadow's pop song reviews.

Bruce the Duck wrote:I don't know that I agree entirely with that, Kevbo. I enjoyed "Toothless People" and "King of Suede" long before I knew what they were parodies of (before the Internet). Nowadays I try to be as informed as possible about the originals, but I could see being able to enjoy the parodies even if I didn't hear the original.

ON the other hand, there are certain things in a parody that sometimes work better if you're familiar with the original. Such as the "W-H-I-M" and "Express Yourself" lines in "Perform This Way," and the entire premise of "Confessions Part III" and "Whatever You Like."

I guess I should rephrase. You can certainly enjoy a parody without being familiar with the original, but I think being familiar with the original, at least in most cases, greatly enhances your enjoyment of the parody.

Over in the Updates topic, two songs from the polka have been made out

Spoiler:

Wrecking Ball and Pumped Up Kicks

Just knowing these two songs has peaked my excitement for it even more.

^Also

Spoiler:

Best Song Ever by One Direction. Which is actually the only of the three I hadn't already heard. I'm thinking I'll be pretty familiar with most of the polka targets, fortunately!

If the list WWW posted in the timeline thread is correct, it looks like we're in for a great polka