(Flickr photo courtesy of wader)
For the first time in his nearly three-decade career, comedy maestro “Weird Al” Yankovic is releasing his parody of a current No. 1 single — evidently just days after he thought of it.
Yankovic’s version of “Whatever You Like,” a riff on the T.I. track of the same name, will be available for download tomorrow (Oct. 7) on iTunes, where it will be an exclusive for two weeks before being released on other digital download services.
In a post on his MySpace blog, Yankovic indicates “Whatever You Like” may be the first in a series of future, more timely digital releases.
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years,” Yankovic writes. “Now, with the advent and popularity of digital distribution, I don’t have to wait around while my songs get old and dated — I can get them out on the Internet almost immediately. It kind of boggles my mind — I thought of the idea for this new song a week ago, and next week it’s getting released!”
Maybe this is just off-hand correlation, but I’ve found bands that don’t take themselves quite so seriously, like Mr. Yankovic and They Might Be Giants, have always been the first to embrace a new technology or pioneer a trend years before other, more “normal” bands catch on. I actually did a whole bit on TMBG’s forward thinking way back in April. Mr. Yankovic also made some serious splashes a few years back by releasing a video single for each of the tracks on the most recent album, Straight Outta Lynwood. Were I to manage a band right now, I’d do the exact same thing: make a video for every track you put on that thing, and put ‘em up on YouTube.
I also must admit I am a little jealous of the fun Al no doubt had putting this together and releasing it. There are few things so exciting and gratifying as putting together a song from concept to record in a matter of days – the energy of that process is hard to replicate. My last experience with that was when my old somewhat-side-project Vermin and the Drew did a track for Aardvark’s Tag Team Olympics.
Kudos to Al, and I hope you all check out the track tomorrow.
