“Weird Al” Yankovic has had a storied profession creating tune parodies of a few of the greatest artists on the planet. However the singer can’t appear to recover from his current look on the cover of Billboard.
Whereas chatting with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Present Tuesday (June 10), Yankovic gushed about gracing our entertainment forward of his upcoming Larger and Weirder Tour. “That was such a giant deal to me, as a result of I grew up being obsessive about Billboard journal,” he raved, saying that the duvet slot implies that an artist has “made it” in his eyes. “That was just like the bible of the leisure trade.”
The popularity was particularly significant to him as he says his title was spelled incorrectly in his first-ever Billboard journal look (whoops). “They misspelled my title, and also you’d assume it will be ‘Yankovic,’” he recalled, laughing. “Nevertheless it was ‘Bizarre Owl.’”
Additionally on The Tonight Present, Yankovic revealed that he tried a number of occasions to get Princes’s approval on a tune earlier than his death in 2016. “Prince is just like the one man who was by no means into it, and he’s bought a superb humorousness,” Yankovic started, noting that he as soon as heard a recording of the late icon praising certainly one of his spoofs.
“When it got here to parodying certainly one of his songs, not a lot,” the musician continued, revealing that he submitted a minimum of “half a dozen” rejected requests to Prince.
Yankovic additionally shared one of many concepts that by no means bought Prince’s sign-off: a parody of the funk-pop star’s hit tune “1999,” which might’ve been referred to as “$19.99” and written within the model of a TV infomercial. “This killed me, as a result of I assumed it was going to be actually humorous,” Yankovic stated on the late-night present.
Although Prince was by no means down for his songs to get the Bizarre Al therapy, the comic has made joke-filled variations of hits initially by Michael Jackson, Girl Gaga, Queen, Police and numerous different stars over the course of his decades-long profession. Even Don McLean, who’s supposedly laborious to persuade on the parody entrance, allowed Yankovic to place his personal spin on “American Pie,” telling Billboard of the ensuing Star Wars-themed “The Saga Begins,” “I assumed it was higher than the unique.”
However as a result of Yankovic has at all times been diligent about getting artist’s permissions earlier than parodying them, he advised Fallon that he gained’t ever try to remake a Prince tune sooner or later. “I attempt to respect the desires of the artist, and he made his needs very, very clear whereas he was with us,” Yankovic stated on the late-night present, incomes laughs from the viewers.
Watch Yankovic’s full interview with Fallon above.