Al Yankovic Quotes

Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.

I’m watching the charts every week and hoping something will pop into my head.

Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you‘ll be watching TV, and it’ll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you’ll actually find yourself thinking, ‘I don’t want to hear about this train being derailed! What happened to ‘The Flintstones?’

You don’t need to be defined by your job.

I know now that everything I write, I’m going to put out, and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life.

At this point I’ve got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when ‘Weird Al’ wants to go parody, it’s not meant to make them look bad… it’s meant to be a tribute.

It’s hard to force creativity and humor.

As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it’s been a huge promotional tool for me.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can’t think of a clever enough idea.

Somebody will come up to me after a show and have me sign their arm, and the next time I see them my autograph has been permanently inscribed on their arm.

I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.

How can you get bored if the audience is cheering and laughing at something you’re doing?

A lot of rap songs don’t usually have a lot of melody per se.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children‘s book was something that I’d been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.

I don’t think there are any new media I’d like to cover.

People that were a little nerdy in high school would look up to me and know it gets better.

Pop culture‘s gotten much more disposable.

When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an architect, because when I was 12 years old I had a guidance counselor that convinced me that that was the best career choice for me.

It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I’ve ever done, so it’s a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.

I’m very analytical, I’m very precise.

As it turns out, there is a thing called the Internet, and stuff does go out there whether the suits like it or not.

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.

You still have Top 40 radio now, but it’s 40 different stations. There aren’t many hits that everybody knows, and there aren’t many real superstars.

By the time I’m in the studio recording my parody, 10,000 parodies of that song are on YouTube.

Some people want to advertise their weirdness, and spread it out, that’s not me.

As my father used to tell me, the only true sign of success in life is being able to do for a living that which makes you happy.

I’m obviously not a rapper, and I don’t have any claims to be one, really.

When I go to my live shows it’s often a multigenerational audience, a family bonding experience.

So that’s why one of my rules of parody writing is that it’s gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

So I’m one of the few celebrities that got to do a repeat performance on ‘The Simpsons,’ which I’m very flattered by.

Whenever I do a parody it’s not meant to make you hate anybody‘s music really.

I’ve done a movie and a TV series, and someday I’d like to do a successful movie and a successful TV series. That would be nice.

My personal taste doesn’t enter into it a lot when I make my decisions as to what to parody.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don’t realize there’s a lot of craft behind the comedy.

You fake something until you’re good at it.