Weird Al Yankovic says he owes everything to Michael Jackson
I don’t know about you, but when Weird Al Yankovic came out with his famous parodies to Michael Jackson’s songs, “Beat It” and “Bad”, I was cracking up. Here we had the first comedian trying to parody the late King of Pop and it was cool. He did his renditions, “Eat It” and “Fat” with the approval of Michael, and they were spot on.
After Michael’s untimely demise, Al says that he owes everything to Michael, and rightfully so.
He said, “I don’t know what kind of career I would have today if it hadn’t been for Michael Jackson. In a very real sense, he jump-started my career. ‘Eat It’ basically changed me from an unknown into a guy that got recognized at Burger King.”
He also gave Michael props for disallowing the use of “Black Or White” as his followup parody, because it made him turn to another group to parody – Nirvana.
He added, “I considered parodying ‘Black Or White…Michael wasn’t quite so into it, because he thought ‘Black Or White’ was more of a message song, and he didn’t feel as comfortable with a parody of that one, which I completely understood. In a way, he did me a huge favor, because I was already getting pegged as the guy who did Michael Jackson parodies, and because he wasn’t so into it, I decided to go with Nirvana, which wound up revitalizing my career.”
Kudos to Al for point out that Michael was a true inspiration.
Micheal was really cool to let him make fun of his songs. Eminem threatened Weird Al with law-suits and I doubt many others would approve, but Micheal did. He had a good sense of humor.
Comment by Evasen — July 13, 2009 @ 10:20 am