"Weird Al" Yankovic: "America is Doomed: the Musical"
September 30, 2020 3:31 PM   Subscribe

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- loup



 
I think a few of us are old enough to remember when we all thought Weird Al was a one-trick 'thing.' Then we blinked, we're all much older, and somehow Weird Al is one of the thin and tenuous lines to any good and happy thing I can find in the mediascape today. Who predicted that?

ntm this is as fine a summary of where we're at as I'm ever gonna find
posted by elkevelvet at 3:43 PM on September 30, 2020 [28 favorites]


It's nice to see the Gregory bros are still out there doing their thing.
posted by Drab_Parts at 3:54 PM on September 30, 2020 [7 favorites]


I. Needed. This.
Badly needed it.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:08 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]


I just want to know how he turned this around in, what, 15, 16 hours?
posted by vverse23 at 4:17 PM on September 30, 2020 [10 favorites]


To be honest, I was a little worried that he would "both sides" this so as not to offend any of his fans who are (inexplicably) Trump supporters. But I should have known better than to underestimate Alfred Matthew Yankovic. Having watched it all the way through, Trump is portrayed as the lunatic that he is, and Biden as earnestly trying to salvage civil discourse, albeit imperfectly. I suppose a Trump supporter might watch this and mock Biden for not fully committing to submerging himself in the muck of Trump's inanity, but that's on them. This isn't as full-throated an endorsement as, say, Dwayne Johnson's recent surprise endorsement of Biden/Harris, but it's certainly not an endorsement of Trump, and if one agrees that the upcoming election is binary (with no major third party spoilers), then (IMHO) the song is a de facto endorsement of Biden.

Which seems kind of ... brilliant?

(There's also the matter of Weird Al's clowning in the intro and throughout the song, which ... I don't know yet how to express this, but he seems to absorb some of the absurdity of the debate (much like an archetypal jester) along with the Idiot-in-Chief, leaving Biden to be the most level-headed leader in the room. But maybe I've tipped over into beanplating territory.)
posted by vverse23 at 4:33 PM on September 30, 2020 [7 favorites]


By being Weird Fuckin Al, that’s how
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:33 PM on September 30, 2020 [18 favorites]


I think they had the foundation pre-made. If you listen, none of Al's lines reference anything specific about the debate. The Gregory bros. probably combed the debate for lines that would fit and put together the autotune last night and this morning.
posted by holmesian at 4:36 PM on September 30, 2020 [9 favorites]


I think a few of us are old enough to remember when we all thought Weird Al was a one-trick 'thing.' Then we blinked, we're all much older, and somehow Weird Al is one of the thin and tenuous lines to any good and happy thing I can find in the mediascape today. Who predicted that?

I'm 40 and I can only assume this "Who predicted that?" period was during ye olden days during the Korean War or something.
posted by sideshow at 4:37 PM on September 30, 2020 [5 favorites]


Welcome to the resistance, Al.
posted by bondcliff at 4:55 PM on September 30, 2020 [5 favorites]


There's a making of video in which it's pretty clear that the Weird Al segment was recorded a few weeks before the debate.

Which just makes it more impressive, really.
posted by MrVisible at 5:00 PM on September 30, 2020 [9 favorites]


That is genuinely amazing. Like, even if he had a melody and some of his own lines ready to go before the debate, he still had to select the best Biden and Trump lines and cut them together so they rhyme, then auto-tune them to fit the melody, then they had to do all the production and editing and special effects... literally overnight! I imagine Al and his crew are all sound asleep right now, after shooting this thing at 3 AM and madly editing past dawn. It's impressive it got done at all, and it's even more impressive that it's actually good. I didn't think it was both-sides-y at all. Trump comes across as the monster he is. God bless Weird Al.

Germs, an older NIN parody by Weird Al, has also become distressingly timely in 2020. It's catchy as hell, and it's the only time I've seen Al be... hot?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:01 PM on September 30, 2020 [11 favorites]


This is the healing my spirit needed
posted by Rinku at 6:05 PM on September 30, 2020


I'm quite pleased I watched this rather than the actual debate.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:09 PM on September 30, 2020 [8 favorites]


Wow. I Hated It. It turns the presidential debates into a puppet show (which it is, of course) but vaguely feeds into the whole both-sides-of-it bullshit perceptions. What I think is that they blur their point too much.
posted by ovvl at 6:09 PM on September 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


This was the first time I've seen any footage from the debate. I was honestly very impressed with how young and vibrant Joe Biden is looking. You guys, I think he's got what it takes.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:30 PM on September 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is absolutely an improvement, and ironically less weird.
posted by subocoyne at 7:37 PM on September 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


I really don't like Weird Al pretty much all the time. That was great.
posted by philip-random at 9:37 PM on September 30, 2020


We're living in the apocalypse. I'm begging you to put a stop this, pretty please?
posted by Quonab at 11:08 PM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


One marker of these days is that 'Weird Al' is no longer weird.
posted by vacapinta at 9:08 AM on October 1, 2020


I didn't know who the Gregory Brothers were but their history would suggest that they played a significant role here. The "original music" is credited to Weird Al but I'd be interested to see a making-of, just to find out how the heck this thing happened. Any way you slice it, having something this produced and topical ready to go mere hours after the debate is an impressive feat.

I just can't buy the accusations of both-sides-ism. They're both made to sing via auto-tune,but Trump comes across as a ridiculous maniac and Biden is the exasperated, sensible straight man. The video doesn't end with the words VOTE FOR BIDEN in big flashing letters but it stops just short.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:12 PM on October 1, 2020 [5 favorites]


I cannot fathom how this video could be interpreted as bothsideserism. He's explicitly asking "who's it gonna be?" while begging people to put a stop to this - it couldn't be more clearly framed as Weird Al saying "we gotta choose and it has to be the right one which is Not Trump" if he'd ended it, as Ursula Hitler suggested, with a flashing VOTE FOR BIDEN.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 3:14 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


Ursula: Good news: The Gregory Brothers released a behind-the-scenes video today (YouTube).
posted by Inkslinger at 3:25 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


Imagine a nation under threat from a tidal wave of fascism sweeping the world, new technology bombs falling on us, total fear... and then, an ugly old man who looks like a dog declaims like he thinks that he's Shakespeare: "our darkest hour"; "we will fight them on the beaches"; "never have so many owed so much"; etc.

Winston had a lot in common with Adolf, and also FDR, Stalin, Gandhi, Mao... they all loved poetry and art, and they all like to create a vision, and frame a grand narrative around it, and convince people about it.

The Incumbent (ignores poetry&art) frames a crude vivid narrative & creates a vision, ugh.

It would be nice if he were opposed by a vision more emphatic than a polite please stop the end of the world as we know it okay? The Dems have been weak at the "Framing Narrative" game ever since the Obama "Change". AOC is pretty good at this, that's the future. The Dems have not really done much effective propaganda lately.

I hope that the Incumbent's bizarre apocalyptic visions for his minority of followers is weighed on a scale against most humans, and found to be wanting, when the time comes.

Personally, I am a big fan of Weird Al (great cameo in that Leslie Nielson film, dude!); and I am also a big fan of the Gregory Clan (auto-tune-the-news #6!), but I regret to say: this project falls short of my admiration. I think it muddies the waters of discourse.

Both-sides are on the same puppet stage saying some things (JB kinda more rational than DT) while Al freaks. I kinda don't see how this conveys Biden-ism to any audience, unless we're already there. Otherwise it's just vaguely seems like nihilist phantasmagoria, and I'm already there.
posted by ovvl at 7:05 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is not helpful. It's not even funny. It's just sort of needlesdly bizzare, and we already have far too much bizzare surrounding this election.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:31 PM on October 2, 2020


Having watched that making-of video, it now seems like Weird Al was mostly just an actor in this. He was credited with "original music, " but it seemed like the Gregory Brothers were writing most if not all of the lyrics and one of them even seemed to be singing Weird Al's parts. Did Al just write the tune?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 8:08 PM on October 2, 2020


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