Am I the primary particular person to really feel unusual calling you ‘bizarre’?”
John Mayer — bespectacled, grinning goofily, very a lot nerding out — is sitting throughout from “Weird Al” Yankovic, interviewing the Hawaiian shirt-clad parody music king, who’s sitting throughout from him for his SiriusXM present, How’s Life With John Mayer.
“You’ll be able to name me Al, like Paul Simon says,” Yankovic says with smile, earlier than including that essentially the most regular factor about him is, most likely, his pancreas.
It’s a humorous quip, but in addition an understatement. Let’s simply get this out of the best way: “Bizarre Al” Yankovic is, beneath his accordion-playing, polka-loving floor, exceedingly regular. He likes lengthy night walks to get his steps in. He enjoys seeing films and making an attempt out new eating places together with his spouse and daughter, who simply graduated faculty. He grumbles good-naturedly concerning the ongoing renovation of his residence within the Hollywood Hills. (“It’s going to look virtually precisely the identical because it did earlier than, besides it break the bank!”) The 65-year-old artist’s one try at rock star conduct, again in his early-’80s heyday, was comically un-vain: On a touring rider, he requested, within the spirit of Van Halen’s famed ban on brown M&M’S, “one actually horrible Hawaiian shirt for each present I did.” (On that run, he did 200, and a group that now extends to a storage unit someplace in larger L.A. started.)
Nonetheless, if not exactly bizarre, Yankovic is really singular. His catalog will be divided into two sorts of songs: intricately crafted, meticulously organized, hilarious but by no means mean-spirited parodies of hits by acts starting from Michael Jackson to Coolio to Nirvana to Woman Gaga, and authentic pastiches, for which he deep dives into artists’ catalogs to create songs that, with eerie accuracy, mimic the sounds and idiosyncrasies of these genre-spanning artists.
Between the 2, he has completed feats normally reserved for the very artists he parodies. Throughout every of the primary 4 a long time of his profession, he has had entries on the Billboard Hot 100, and eight of his albums have reached the highest 20 on the Billboard 200 — together with his most up-to-date studio launch, 2014’s Obligatory Enjoyable, which grew to become his first No. 1 on the chart. He has gained 5 Grammy Awards and an Emmy. Billboard estimates he has bought 12 million albums in the USA (based mostly on RIAA certifications pre-1991 and Luminate information from 1991 on).
Extremely, he’s accomplished all this with out ever altering his important “Bizarre Al”-ness. “From day one, there was by no means even a dialogue that will not be about following his singular imaginative and prescient,” says Jay Levey, Yankovic’s supervisor of 43 years and someday artistic collaborator (notably, they co-wrote the now nerd canon comedy UHF, which Levey additionally directed). “It’s laborious to seek out any profession the place there’s actually no compromise, however we’d be capable of depend on one hand the variety of compromises he’s made in his profession.”
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Generally, that’s meant turning down profitable offers, just like the $5 million beer endorsement that Yankovic handed on in 1990 as a result of, he feared, the model was “making an attempt to make me into Joe Camel.” Many instances, it’s meant standing as much as record-label executives, like when, amid his “draconian” first album contract with Scotti Brothers (an indie then distributed by CBS), he was requested to shoot 10 music movies on a $30,000 price range just because he’d proved he may do one for $3,000. (“I’m like, ‘No. No, I can’t!’ ”)
However simply as typically, it’s meant embracing an open-to-anything spirit that appears to virtually at all times work out in his favor. Yankovic determined very early in his profession to ask permission of any artist he parodied — not as a result of the legislation required it (it doesn’t) however as a result of he merely had little interest in making enemies. With only a few exceptions, it turned out, the artists stated sure, even supposedly impossible-to-convince ones like “American Pie” scribe Don McLean, who OK’d “The Saga Begins,” Yankovic’s 1999 parody that primarily summarizes the plot of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. “After I heard his model, I assumed it was higher than the unique. The sound high quality was excellent,” says McLean, who calls Yankovic a “straight-ahead good boy” who “may very well be on Depart It to Beaver.”
Due to that mixture of earnest good intentions, work ethic, spine and obsession with high quality, Yankovic finds himself in an uncommon place immediately: He’s no novelty relic of the ’80s, however a really cross-generational artist. Previously six years alone, he’s portrayed Rivers Cuomo in Weezer’s “Africa” music video, performed accordion (and appeared within the video) for teen rock band The Linda Lindas’ 2024 single “Yo Me Estreso” and lip-synced dramatically in a tux in Clairo’s “Terrapin” video. “Rising up together with his movies was an enormous factor in my technology,” says Clairo, 26. “Again when YouTube was actually easy, it actually hit residence for us in center faculty to look at his parodies. He at all times knew how to attract individuals in.”
He and his workforce will show simply how true that also is when Yankovic heads out on the Larger and Weirder Tour this summer time. It’s his fastest-promoting, biggest-grossing tour but, based on his agent, Wasserman Music’s Brad Goodman, and his greatest by different metrics, too: an eight-piece band (his largest but) onstage; first-time venues greater than any he’s performed earlier than, together with New York’s Madison Sq. Backyard and L.A.’s Kia Discussion board; a mini-Las Vegas residency (the tour will open June 13 with six sold-out nights at The Venetian); and stops each anticipated (Crimson Rocks Amphitheatre) and fewer so (Riot Fest) on the route. And the live performance itself is a trademark Bizarre Al spectacle: half rock present, half revival tent, half Broadway musical, all “pleasure bomb,” as actor and longtime fan Andy Samberg places it.
Whether or not it turns into a springboard for the subsequent Bizarre Al period is anybody’s guess — together with Yankovic himself. Proper now, he has no additional plans to launch albums; and since Obligatory Enjoyable arrived over a decade in the past, he’s solely sporadically launched new music, most lately the 2024 “Polkamania!” single (the history in his long-running collection of madcap polka medleys, this one recapping the previous decade’s pop highlights, all sung in Yankovic’s manic tenor). Round that point, his contract of roughly 20 years with Sony ended, and he determined to not renew with the label, or signal with anybody else.
“No person owns any piece of me,” he says, exhaling. “I’m at some extent in my life the place if one thing isn’t going to be enjoyable or a pleasing expertise, I’ve no downside saying no, even when it’s some huge cash or plenty of eyeballs. I can do actually no matter I really feel like doing.”
Then once more, for Yankovic, that’s at all times been true.
“After I was a child, I used to fantasize about being the subsequent Bizarre Al, prefer it’s a place he utilized for and received,” says Lin-Manuel Miranda, a lifelong fan who’s now additionally mates with Yankovic. “And then you definately develop up and understand, ‘Oh, there’s solely one in all that man.’ We’re not going to see one other Bizarre Al.”
On an overcast April afternoon just a few days after the Mayer taping, Yankovic meets me for lunch at Crossroads, a vegan spot in West Hollywood the place, years in the past, he ate his first Unattainable Burger. He’s fast to jokingly be aware that he’s not a member of town’s “vegan elite” — nonetheless, as he walks in, a person strolling a golden retriever stops his cellphone dialog to stare and declare, “It’s that Al Yanko-vich man!”
Regardless of his expertise for writing songs about junk meals (“My Bologna,” “The White Stuff”) and the truth that he as soon as consumed the world’s most ungodly snack, a Twinkie Canine, in UHF (watch and barf a bit of), he’s been vegan because the early ’90s.
Chalk it as much as veganism, staying out of the solar (“I soften in direct daylight”) or following the instructions of his longtime hair stylist, Sean James, very effectively (he by no means blow-dries these well-known ringlets, therefore their eternally bouncy and well-defined nature), however Yankovic has an ageless high quality that lends a lot of his followers to liken him to mythological figures. “He’s Santa Claus for nerds of a sure stripe,” Miranda says, a comparability Mayer had additionally made (in addition to to Forrest Gump). His curls could also be a bit of grayer, however his ultra-expressive face — acrobatic eyebrows specifically — displays his everlasting curiosity and up-for-anything-ness.
As we settle in for almond ricotta-stuffed zucchini blossoms and meatless bolognese, Yankovic is especially animated recounting his earlier weekend, when he made his history shock look: his Coachella debut. To shut out its surreal set, the crew from the cult-favorite youngsters present Yo Gabba Gabba! introduced out a forged of characters each human (Thundercat, Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley) and never a lot (cartoon mascots like Sleestak, PuffnStuf and Duo the Duolingo owl) to sing “The Rainbow Connection” with its composer, Paul Williams — and, on lead vocals, Yankovic.
“I’ve had a reasonably weird life, so it wasn’t like, so uncommon,” Yankovic displays. “However it was positively a bit of little bit of an out-of-body expertise.” He admits that the “hey youngsters, let’s placed on a present” power was enjoyable and that the invite wasn’t a complete shock (having appeared on a season-three episode as an accordion-playing circus ringmaster, he’s tight with the Gabba group). Nonetheless, he speaks of such invitations with a form of humble awe.
“Nothing I’ve ever accomplished was me considering, ‘Boy, I hope youngsters uncover this 40 years from now,’ ” he says. Beginning within the ’80s, he launched an album virtually yearly “as a result of I used to be afraid I might be shortly forgotten. It was drilled into me: ‘You’re a comedy artist, you’re a novelty artist, you’re fortunate when you’re a one hit-wonder — you’re not destined to have a protracted profession.’ I wished to seize that brass ring each time I went round.”
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Developing concurrently with the delivery of MTV, and savvily profiting from it, helped Yankovic snatch that ring. He had a eager ear for (and good style in) hits at a time when, because of each MTV and prime 40 radio’s prevalence, a monoculture reigned — and even perhaps extra importantly, he knew the ability of a viral video earlier than such a factor existed.
Tweaking hits like Jackson’s “Beat It” (“Eat It”) and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” (“Like a Surgeon”), Yankovic created new songs that, because of his painstaking re-creations of their preparations, have been instantly recognizable however rewarded repeated consumption — as did their accompanying movies, during which Yankovic demonstrated his unimaginable eye for element and formidable performing chops. “MTV was on like video wallpaper within the background 24 hours a day,” he says of that point. “They have been hungry for content material, and I used to be anxious to offer them content material.”
Since then, Yankovic’s understanding of the promotional energy of visuals has remained prescient — take when, main as much as Obligatory Enjoyable’s arrival, he insisted on releasing a music video on YouTube every day (not suddenly, as some suggested) to whet followers’ appetites for the album. And his genre-agnostic strategy to creating music has proved forward of its time, too. Earlier than hip-hop was broadly accepted as pop, he was particularly drawn to rap. “Loads of pop songs are very repetitive,” he says. “How can I be humorous in seven syllables, you understand? However rap songs, I imply, it’s nothing however phrases, and it’s simple to craft jokes that means.”
Parodies like “Amish Paradise” (Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”) and “White and Nerdy” (Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Soiled”) are amongst his most streamed — although he’s been equally adept at actually any microgenre he takes on, from just-electrified Bob Dylan (“Bob,” fully comprising palindromes) to arty new wave (the Devo pastiche “Dare To Be Silly”) to crunchy Detroit storage rock (“CNR,” a tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly via the lens of The White Stripes).
“The extra you hearken to him, the extra you get entry to creating [any genre of parody] sound professional,” says Samberg, who calls Yankovic the largest affect on his personal comedic music group, The Lonely Island. “The character of what he does is extremely populist. He’s not snooty about it; he’s like, ‘That is what the children like, and so long as I’ve a superb angle comedically, I’m going to do it.’ And due to that, it’s at all times interesting to younger individuals.”
Rising up in Compton-adjacent Lynwood, Calif., Yankovic listened to rock radio, however as an adolescent discovered enjoying the accordion a bit solitary. (His mates’ rock bands weren’t actually thinking about an accordionist becoming a member of up.) “If you take accordion classes, I feel the high-water mark is ‘Perhaps sometime I’ll play in an Italian restaurant or at a marriage,’ ” he says with amusing. “I suppose I used to be shameless. I grew up an entire nerd in highschool. And once you’re not anyone that’s socially acceptable, you form of don’t have anything to lose. I form of held on to that mentality: Like, you understand, ‘Who cares?’ ”
“Bizarre Al” Yankovic photographed April 17, 2025 at Mud Studios in Los Angeles.
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He didn’t look to any specific musician’s profession trajectory as one he may comply with. “It was extra cautionary tales” — and one was particularly haunting. One among his idols was Allan Sherman, the satirical singer greatest recognized for his 1963 summer time camp send-up, “Hey Muddah Hey Fadduh!” “He was the final particular person to have a No. 1 comedy album earlier than me,” Yankovic continues. “He had three No. 1 albums on, like, the pop charts — unimaginable! However inside just a few years, he fully burned out. He made some horrible decisions in his private {and professional} life and simply went off into obscurity and sadly died just a few years later. So I used to be at all times extra involved about, ‘Don’t mess it up. Maintain doing what you’re doing and simply strive to not make unhealthy decisions.’ ”
“In a means, we’re virtually at all times wanting over our shoulders at that,” his supervisor Levey says. He cautiously admits that he and Yankovic have lastly reached a degree in his profession the place they’re “not on the level the place yearly [of continued success] is a shock,” then provides, “I don’t truly even like saying that out loud as a result of it sounds such as you’re taking one thing with no consideration.”
But when Sherman was a rocket that blasted off solely to burst into flames, Yankovic has been the alternative: one which, as Levey places it, has stored steadily touring via house — perhaps typically at a slower pace than others, however by no means plummeting again all the way down to Earth, buffeted by essentially the most sudden boosters. Like, say, Bizarre: The Al Yankovic Story, the 2022 parody of a music biopic that Yankovic co-wrote, starring Daniel Radcliffe within the titular function. Regardless of at first airing solely on the Roku Channel, it gained virtually common acclaim and a prime-time Emmy, whereas increasing Yankovic’s universe but once more.
“His longevity is a testomony to his capacity to be himself and keep on with what his style is, as a result of it’s so particular,” Radcliffe says. (“Bob” is his favourite Yankovic monitor, and he took the chance on set to ask his hero how he got here up with all of the palindromes.) “He threads a extremely hard-to-thread needle between healthful enjoyable and one thing … genuinely deranged and really, very unusual. And in a means that isn’t affected.” At a time when the tradition values authenticity above all else, Yankovic is a strolling instance of it — by no means not himself.
Unwittingly proving the purpose, Yankovic gasps in glee as our lunch ends. “Mochi doughnuts!” He reveals me a photograph his spouse has simply texted him: a field of the treats for dessert later. Considerably sheepishly, he explains the event: “Eric Idle is coming over for dinner tonight. That’s my massive flex for immediately.”
Later that afternoon, Yankovic meets me in a park close to Coldwater Canyon known as Tree Folks. He seems a bit of like a extra aged model of his faux-Indiana Jones in UHF: Hawaiian shirt (a Goodwill purchase), wise sneakers, safari hat shielding the waning solar.
“I’m gearing up for a giant tour, so I’m largely simply ensuring I don’t have a coronary heart assault onstage or go out or one thing,” he says of the walks he takes in spots like this. “I feel I’ve misplaced 20 kilos up to now couple months simply because I’m not, like, consuming junk meals at midnight anymore.”
Yankovic’s final tour outing didn’t require a lot of a bodily routine. In 2022 and 2023, he took to smaller venues for The Unlucky Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Unwell-Suggested Self-importance Tour, a follow-up to the primary Self-importance Tour in 2018. The concept, he remembers, occurred to him when “I used to be placing on my ‘Fats’ swimsuit for the thousandth time and I assumed, ‘Wouldn’t it simply be good to love, exit onstage and play the songs, sit on a stool and have an intimate night with followers?’ ”
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So Yankovic eschewed the same old manufacturing degree of his excursions — costumes, wigs, the parody hits — for an idea, his agent Goodman says, that the musician himself wasn’t fully satisfied would work. As an alternative, it allowed him to go to new, smaller major-market venues (Carnegie Corridor, Tennessee’s The Caverns) and strengthen his presence in off-the-beaten-path markets (like, say, Huntsville, Ala.) whereas superserving his ride-or-die followers. When the idea returned in 2022, he performed 162 Self-importance reveals globally (extending into the subsequent yr).
“I cherished it, the band cherished it, the individuals who confirmed up cherished it, and it positively scratched that itch,” Yankovic says. “And now,” with the Larger and Weirder Tour, he’s again to “doing a present for everyone.”
For Larger and Weirder, Yankovic is in self-described “overpreparer” mode, the hyper-organized artistic core of his workforce. “I got here up with the setlist a yr in the past. I gave the band” — three of whom, as of our assembly, he has but to fulfill — “their marching orders and stated, ‘Right here’s the setlist, right here’s your charts, right here’s the demos, listed below are the rehearsal days.’ ” He personally chooses and edits all of the present’s video content material — clips of Bizarre Al in Pop Tradition (say, on The Simpsons or 30 Rock) through the years that can play between songs and provides him and the band time for essentially the most frantic ingredient of the present, which the viewers by no means sees.
“We’ve got stage props, wigs, plenty of costume adjustments, and a giant portion of what we’d like is a quick-change space behind the scenes onstage, normally 40 by 20 ft,” says Melissa King, his tour supervisor of practically 20 years. On Larger and Weirder, Yankovic will do 20 costume adjustments, give or take a jacket or hat; his band members will do 9; and all will happen in 45 seconds most.
That backstage planning ensures that in entrance of the viewers, the person who has spent his profession parodying rock and pop stars is free to embody one himself. “After I communicate to [talent] consumers and say, ‘Have you ever seen the present?,’ if there’s a pause, for certain I do know the reply is not any,” Goodman says. “As a result of when you’ve seen the present, it’s simply a right away ‘Yeah, after all, it’s unimaginable.’ ”
Onstage, Yankovic isn’t simply bodily “working his ass off,” as Samberg says. “As a vocalist, he’s f–king unimaginable,” Radcliffe marvels. “He has this wonderful, clear tone. His vary is so spectacular — he does issues to his voice that, as anyone who sings a bit in musicals typically, if I attempted that I’d harm myself.”
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Regardless of the “greater” facets of this tour — like the way it will use three vans as an alternative of the same old one — King remains to be one in all simply 11 individuals comprising the crew. “It’s very lean, but it surely works as a result of all of us work collectively,” she says. “Al’s a real, variety particular person, and since he’s, that’s the best way everybody in our camp is.” That ethos extends to each the followers who’ll attend (“There aren’t many arseholes who’re Bizarre Al followers,” Radcliffe observes) and the way Yankovic treats them: In line with Goodman, he’s stored most ticket costs for Larger and Weirder to $179.50 and has at all times refused to have interaction with platinum ticketing.
Proper now, the tour is Yankovic’s focus. When he determined in opposition to renewing his Sony contract, Levey says, they examined the waters with “very restricted outreach” to a mixture of indie and main labels. “And we received nice provides and I introduced these provides to him, and he considered it and stated, ‘I’m actually loving this sense of not being underneath contract to anyone … Please inform these individuals how appreciative I’m of their beneficiant provides and we’re simply not going to simply accept any of them.’ ”
He’s now impartial within the truest sense: He has an imprint, Manner Moby, that’s technically now his label, however he describes it extra as current for theoretical recording functions. He figures he’ll put out a single right here and there, contribute to soundtracks if he’s requested and, as at all times, stay open to what could come — like making a shock look final November to duet with Will Forte on Chappell Roan’s “Sizzling To Go!” at a charity occasion or creating a Broadway Bizarre Al jukebox musical that he says is within the very earliest artistic levels, a “bucket listing” undertaking.
“When [he had] the No. 1 album within the nation, that was such a triumphant second. I bear in mind us celebrating,” Samberg remembers. “It simply reveals you — I don’t assume anybody else will actually contact that house. It’s his house. Nobody goes to say, ‘I’m going to do what Al does,’ ’trigger good luck. He owns that till he doesn’t wish to do it anymore.”
The world, Yankovic is aware of, can be not the identical as when he first grew to become well-known. “I received a report deal, I received on MTV, and I form of had the market to myself,” he displays. “Now the enjoying discipline has been so leveled that anyone can add their materials to YouTube or numerous portals like that. And if the stuff is nice, chances are high individuals will finally see it. I’d prefer to assume that if I used to be developing now, I’d nonetheless do OK, however it will simply be extra of a problem.”
It’s a beneficiant sentiment, a reminder that, as Miranda places it, one in all Yankovic’s many abilities can be “studying the room.” However in its humility, it’s additionally a reminder that, flooded because the market could now be with humorous individuals on the web, none of them, nonetheless, are doing it like Bizarre Al: the 65-year-old who as soon as thought he’d play accordion at weddings and Italian eating places, who’s about to make his Madison Sq. Backyard debut.
This story seems within the June 7, 2025, of Billboard.