Top Twelve Weird Al parodies (part I)

Weird Al Yankovic has taken the practice of parody and turned it into something of an art form. There has always been impersonation an parody in the world. We might have learned it from that bird  that borrows other bird songs to sing. You do it too, even if you don't realize it. Stop and think the next time you're in your car and the radio is on. If it's a song you know, you probably sing along. If it's a song you don't like, you probably make a mockery of it, sort of your own personal parody.

With this in mind, it's obvious that lots of artists have taken part in parody, so what makes Weird Al so special? Weird Al and his band go out of their way to make the parody as close to the song as possible. If you listen to the two songs back to back, you can hear how well they cover the song. The main difference is that Weird Al is singing completely different lyrics. Not only that, but Weird Al manages to sound like the singer. (if he wants to) In some cases there is a significant difference because of the message of the song. (Listen to "Smells like Nirvana" and try to tell me that doesn't sound like Nirvana, well, until the cow starts mooing.)

I've been thinking about the way I want to do this list, and I've decided to break it up into 12 separate blog posts. In each post I'll talk about the original song and then the parody. It will still be a top twelve list, but it will follow that format. Before we get started with that, I will make a couple of honorable mentions to get us started.

Honorable Mentions

Confessions Part III-(Parody of Confessions and Confessions Part II by Usher.)
This song makes fun of the idea of the Confessions songs. In Confessions (parts I and II) Usher takes on the persona of a cheating man who wants to tell the woman he loves about all of his transgressions. (In part II he fills in some of the details he forgot in the previous song.) In the parody, Weird Al makes sure to include all of the unpleasant things that were left of in parts I and II. These include lying about knowing Pauly Shore, killing her goldfish, and not changing his underwear for 27 days.

Ricky- (Parody of Mickey by Toni Basil)
What better way to parody Mickey to change the name to Ricky and turn it into a double parody. Double Parody? That's right, this song parodies the song Mickey, but it also parodies the show I Love Lucy. The song is pretty good on it's own, but you need to look up the music video, which was probably the first comedic video on MTV. What's so great about it? Just imagine Weird Al dressed up like Ricky Ricardo with a girl dressed like Lucy and all the trappings of the show. It's great, but the best moment is around 30 seconds when a door opens on the band and Weird Al does one of those rock jumps that is usually done with a guitar, but he does it with his accordion.

So that's the introduction to our top twelve Weird Al parodies. Be on the lookout for Number 12 coming soon. Leave a comment or a question if you have one.