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"Weird Al" Yankovic

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"Weird Al" Yankovic

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Also known as Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic, Alfred Matthew Yankovic, Weird Al, Al Yankovic, Weird Al Yankovic

American comedy musician and actor (born 1959)

OverviewAI-generated

"Weird Al" Yankovic is an American male artist whose career began in 1976. He is associated with genres including accordion, comedy, comedy rock, and parody. His work has been recognized in the Hollywood Walk of Fame collection. Yankovic has authored seven works, including "Comedy Bang! Bang! the Podcast" and "Weird Accordion to Al : Every Weird Al Yankovic Album Analyzed in Obsessive Detail by the Co-Author of Weird Al".

Born on October 23, 1959, Yankovic stands 183 units tall. He maintains an official website and shop, and his music has accumulated 26,883,143 plays from 986,713 listeners. His social media presence includes 5,166,047 followers. Artists similar to his style include Jonathan Coulton, Tom Lehrer, The Lonely Island, Tenacious D, and Lemon Demon.

Synthesized by Vinony from 25 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Works
7

Top works

  • Comedy Bang! Bang! the Podcast
  • Weird Accordion to Al : Every Weird Al Yankovic Album Analyzed in Obsessive Detail by the Co-Author of Weird Al
  • Weird Al Deluxe
  • Weird Al Hardcover
  • ILLUSTRATED AL

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
United States
Active from
1959-10-23
accordioncomedycomedy rockfunnyparodypolka

Discography

Official siteDiscogsStream

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
988,093
Total plays
26,938,378

Tags

comedyparodyrockhumorfunny

Similar artists

Jonathan CoultonTom LehrerThe Lonely IslandTenacious DLemon Demon

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (born 23 October 1959 in Downey, California, USA) is an American comedy musician, writer, and actor. He is primarily known for writing and performing comedy songs that parody specific songs by contemporary musicians, as well as for original songs that are style pastiches of other artists’ work and polka medleys of popular songs, often featuring his accordion. Yankovic first gained attention in 1976 when one of his comedy songs was aired on The Dr. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/%22Weird+Al%22+Yankovic">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · "Weird Al" Yankovic

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. Reproducible, interactive, scalable and extensible microbiome data science using QIIME 2

    · 2019 · cited 20,894x

  2. Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

    · 2020 · cited 15,975x

  3. Tissue-based map of the human proteome

    · 2015 · cited 14,111x

  4. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

    · 2018 · cited 10,997x

  5. Global Burden of Cardiovascular Diseases and Risk Factors, 1990–2019

    · 2020 · cited 10,241x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

  • “Alanis Morissette and I actually used to date. I especially liked it when we went to the movies.”
  • “That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism.”
  • “I wrote "Eat It" because I wanted to buy a banana boat for Christmas. It worked.”
  • “I have very mixed feelings about [Napster]. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!”
  • “What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?”
  • “I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (/ˈjæŋkəvɪk/ ; born October 23, 1959) is an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He is best known for writing and performing comedy songs that often parody specific songs by contemporary musicians. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, as well as polka medleys of popular songs, most of which feature his trademark accordion. Since having one of his comedy songs aired on The Dr. Demento Radio Show in 1976 at age 16, Yankovic has sold more than 12 million albums (as of 2025), recorded more than 150 parodies and original songs, and performed more than 2,000 live shows.

Yankovic's success has been attributed to his effective use of music videos to further parody pop culture, the songs' original artists, and the original music videos themselves. He has directed some of his own music videos and also directed music videos for other artists including Ben Folds, Hanson, the Black Crowes, and the Presidents of the United States of America. With the decline of music television and the onset of social media, he used YouTube and other video sites to publish his videos; this strategy helped boost sales of his later albums. He has not released a full album since Mandatory Fun, opting instead for timely releases of singles.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “"Weird Al" Yankovic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (11)

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via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0