World of Weird Al Yankovic

Wanna specify on where exactly?

I can see We Are the Champions definitely.

We Are The Champions - the first verse of WATC and Ringtone have similar building-up type verses/the pulses of music after each line

Don't Stop Me Now I'm Here - after the slow verse at the start, the music picks up tempo in a similar manner to Now I'm Here (after the "'coz you made me live again")

Seven Seas of Rhye/Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy - the piano and guitar throughout the song, plus the background vocals sound very similar

Misfire - again, the electric guitar work, especially the solo in Ringtone, sound quite similar.

Bring Back That Leroy Brown - background vocals for the chorus (Bring back..[bring baaack] and Ringtone [Ringtooooone]) pretty much identical. Also, the "oooooh"s at the end of Leroy sound similar to the ones throughout Ringtone.

Ahhh! I totally get it now! Thanks Grom.

I remember thinking about Now I'm Here with the guitar, too.

Ringtone even reminds me a bit of Bicycle Race.

So, is Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" considered an influence on "When I Was You Age" only, or "Talk Soup" as well? Would that make "Talk Soup" a Peter Gabriel/Stevie Wonder/Don Henley parody?

Someone should add Truck Drivin' Song.

BJ_Sturgeon @ September 14, 2009 02:51 pm wrote: So, is Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" considered an influence on "When I Was You Age" only, or "Talk Soup" as well? Would that make "Talk Soup" a Peter Gabriel/Stevie Wonder/Don Henley parody?

I can see that for Talk Soup, but When I Was Your Age isn't funky enough. I think Stevie Wonder is the mainly influence on Talk Soup, it wouldn't make sense for him to two Sledgehammer style parodies on one album (or twice period).

I've seen your reasons, but I just don't know why you can't just look at the Wikipedia article to see which songs parodied what. I mean, it obviously got its information from reliable sources and is checked 24/7 by computer geeks with nothing else to do.

JCM @ September 14, 2009 06:19 pm wrote: I've seen your reasons, but I just don't know why you can't just look at the Wikipedia article to see which songs parodied what. I mean, it obviously got its information from reliable sources and is checked 24/7 by computer geeks with nothing else to do.

The reason you can't check Wikipedia for style parody information is that it's relatively subjective. For a parody, it's easy to know what song is being parodied because the answer is a definitive known quantity. For a style parody, we don't always know what Al was working with - especially in the 80s albums.

JCM @ September 14, 2009 09:19 pm wrote: I've seen your reasons, but I just don't know why you can't just look at the Wikipedia article to see which songs parodied what.

Because Wikipedia is often lazily assembled and unreliable.

Speaking of style parodies, though, I have one to throw out here. Has anyone ever suggested John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band for "Party at the Leper Colony?"

I know the song's usually been generalized as a hand jive-style number, but there's something about the inflection Al uses in his voice that's making me think there's more to it than that. Also, there definitely seems to be a more modern sound to it...if it was supposed to be a throwback to 1950s-style hand jive numbers, then I don't know if it would have been produced this...I don't know...densely, for lack of a better word.

The rhythm and tempo of the verses are sort of similar to Cafferty's only big mainstream hit, "On the Dark Side"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgloaS4NGyM

Plus, something else to consider: Al originally wanted E Street legend Clarence Clemons to perform the saxophone in PATLC. That would definitely go along with the obvious Springsteen sound Cafferty was trying to ape for "Dark Side" and the songs he recorded for the "Eddie and the Cruisers" movie.

But this is all just a theory.