Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/15/hear-all-77-songs-weird-al-cov.html
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That’s the way to wake up in the morning.
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I love that in between rock classics he slipped in songs that I’ve always wanted to hear him sing or would never expect – Particle Man, Tom Lehrer’s The Elements, Classical Gas, and of course, All Star.
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Heh, reminds me of a holiday with a friend a few years back:
Sussex to Scotland car trip, for music we had the entire weird-al music library back to back.
Only had about 20mins at the end when we ran out of songs 
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I’m impressed. Not only because performing a different song per night 77 times seems ridiculously hard, but with the song choice themselves. I was expecting it to all be funny stuff like TMBG “Particle Man,” and Aretha’s “Natural Woman” sung by him makes it funny—and I was happy for that. But the bulk of the list is true rock-n-roll, down to the bedrock. Down to the essence. Little Richard through the Sex Pistols and Tom Petty. And the 1/4 of them that aren’t necessarily that true-school rock feel are all great songs, too (no surprises there, really. anyone who hasn’t noticed that Al is way deeper than a novelty act hasn’t been paying attention.)
Someone recently hipped me to a “parody” of NIN’s “Terrible Lie” with elements of “Closer” in it, too. The lyrics are all about being paraniod about germs but it mostly works as a straight song; industrial has enough paranoia and mental illness themes that it may as well have been Trent’s real lyrics—well, mostly. And it rocks.
I’ve always liked Al—who hasn’t? (except Coolio, I guess)—but the more stuff he does and the older I get, I’m always more and more impressed. Which is the complete opposite of almost every other recording artist.
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What, did Coolio have beef with him parodying “Gangsta’s Paradise”, a song which he lifted wholesale from Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” to cash in on the gangsta rap era? Ok, whatever dude.
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I was at the Ann Arbor show. When they came out for the encore and Al said that he knew the audience would not be satisfied if they didn’t play the song they were best known for … and launched into Should I Stay Or Should I Go … I was quite tickled. It was like the punchline to a joke with a 35 year setup.
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What a list! I’m sad I didn’t get to see him do Blister in the Sun.
Were any of them not straight covers, beyond Seattle’s Jerry Hendrix Experience?
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I ain’t with that…I think that my song was
too serious…I really…don’t appreciate him desecrating the song like
that… his record company asked for my permission, and I said no. But
they did it anyway…
Years later, Coolio apologized to Weird Al about the misunderstanding surrounding the spoof. “I’ve since apologized to him,” the rapper said. “That was a stupid thing for me to do. That was one of the dumbest things I did in my career.”
10 Musicians Who Refused to Let "Weird Al" Yankovic Parody Their Songs | Mental Floss
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I was kicking myself for missing that show, then I saw the ticket prices and remembered I can’t afford to go to concerts.
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