Pledge Music (2017)
Over the next several weeks, we're going to celebrate Weird Al Wednesday as I go through each of the 15 albums in the Squeeze Box accordion box set. There are many albums in this set that were hugely influential to me as a young kid and there are no shortage of incredible songs throughout. Weird Al and The Blues Brothers are definitely the building blocks for my earliest appreciation of music.
As I mentioned last week, Alapalooza didn't really do much for me and I didn't hear from Al again until 1996, when I was in college. Bad Hair Day reminded me how much I loved Weird Al and put his discography back on track for me. It probably helped that in 1996 you couldn't escape Coolio no matter how hard you tried, so I did actually have a reference point for "Amish Paradise." Lyrically it's a pretty stellar song. I also enjoyed his take on The Presidents of the United States of America with "Gump" his Forrest Gump tinged version of "Lump."
I don't really know any of the other parodies, but the originals on Bad Hair Day are excellent. "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is a super upbeat They Might Be Giants style number. There's also the a cappella doo wop "Since You've Been Gone" and an Elvis Costello fueled "I'm So Sick Of You."
That said, my absolute favorite song on this album is "The Alternative Polka." In my opinion this is the best of Weird Al's polka medleys, I think in part because of the contrast of the silliness of the polka tempo and the seriousness of the lyrics of a lot of the songs included. Included in the polka are Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, Green Day and many more. I'm also convinced that the Alanis Morissette song "You Outta Know" is a tremendously written pop song due to Al's reworking of it. This song alone would make Bad Hair Day my favorite Weird AL record of the 90s, but luckily there's lots of other goodies that make the whole album pretty darn enjoyable.
"Weird Al" Yankovic - "The Alternative Polka":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVWjThlEzts
"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Everything You Know Is Wrong":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EStEiPVcyPA
"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Amish Paradise":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg
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