Top 10 Original Weird Al Yankovic Songs

Songs this good are no joke. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we're counting down our picks for the Top 10 Weird Al Yankovic original songs.


For this list, we're looking beyond Al's classic song parodies to admire some of the hilarious tracks he wrote himself. We're basing our picks on a mix clever lyrics, catchy melodies and how well he managed to tackle the various musical styles of other artists without reworking one of their actual songs.


 
 

In the late 1980s, while promoting his new movie, Weird Al got surprisingly meta. Taking inspiration from old TV station ad campaigns, Al wrote a song celebrating his fictional channel. Of course, the song doubly serves as a love-hate letter to television in general, as Yankovic both praises and mocks the couch potato lifestyle. "UHF" is one of the only track's in Al's discography that doesn't pull from a specific artist, and so, in the video, he impersonates as many acts as humanly possible.  Al truly outdid himself in this video. Amongst the parodies of everyone from Talking Heads to ZZ Top, he even managed to squeeze in a reference to the 'The Outer Limits'.

 

They Might Be Giants are known for their liberal use of accordion, a fact that made them an easy target for Al. Taking to task the band’s often absurdist lyrical style, Yankovic tells a surreal story of a man's reality defying life.  Through strangely optimistic lines about dying, Al also poked fun at They Might Be Giant's use of cheery melodies over dark subject matter. Yankovic delivers one of his most impressive vocal performances when he talks about heaven's dress code at lightning speed, never losing pace with the song. Al even shreds out on the accordion solo, giving They Might Be Giant's a run for their money.
 

Though by 1995 Weird Al had written enough songs about television to release an entire album of the stuff, they weren’t all in celebration of the old idiot box. Adopting the euphoric sounds of R.E.M. to sing about his neighbor's colossal screen, Al set his sights squarely on consumer culture. Taking people's obsession with large televisions to a hyperbolic extreme, Al claims the screen would make Robert DeNiro's mole ten feet wide. Borrowing R.E.M.'s looping harmonies, Yankovic produced a surprisingly catchy bit of commentary.  While it might not dwarf a redwood tree like Al claims, a 2000 inch TV would've been roughly 100 feet tall at the time.



Paying homage to Beach Boy Brian Wilson, Weird Al decided to show some love to an organ that's been sorely undervalued over the years. Even while kidding around, Al manages to accurately describe all the pancreas's functions, including metabolizing carbohydrates. The song's final section lists off all the pancreatic enzymes, somehow producing a rhyme for the islets of Langerhans. Emulating the crazy composition of songs like 'God Only Knows,' Al's harmonies are almost as big as the range of instruments behind the track. It has even earned praise from musicians who played with Wilson over the years.
 

Following the similarly long Rugburns' hit "Dick's Automotive," Weird Al made an eleven minute epic about the mundane. Chronicling a man's life in the New Mexico city, Al intentionally wrote the track to annoy fans with its excessive run-time. Despite Yankovic's malevolent intentions, the track became such a fan favorite that he started to encore with it. Unsurprisingly, with all the song's boring tangents, it's still Al's longest song to date. The lyrics were so long that even his liner notes on 'Running With Scissors' were cut off to joke that the words were too long for the page.



Al had a hard time staying funny when his girlfriend broke up with him ahead of his third album. Instead of crying, Yankovic wrote a break up ballad to fire back at his ex. Taking cues from classic doo-wop songs, Al belts about happily eating shards of broken glass rather than seeing his lover again. Yankovic subverted cliché love songs through intensely visual lyrics that suggest swimming through razor blades. While hilariously over-the-top, the bitter lyrics apparently actually proved therapeutic for Al. If this wasn't enough, Al allegedly rips an actual photo of his ex in the music video.
 

Very few people have the faintest idea who Charles Nelson Reilly is these days, but that wasn’t going to stop "Weird Al" from writing about him anyways. Despite Reilly's place in history as an obscure comedian, the lyrics claim he could excrete diamonds and figured out cold fusion. Inspired by songs like "The Denial Twist" and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," Al set his anthem to the guitar stylings of the White Stripes. As crazy as Yankovic's lyrics are, the ridiculous storytelling actually fits Jack White's writing style quite well. Just in case you wanted to face Reilly yourself, comedy site JibJab even let you put your face in Al's video.
 

After hearing a disheartened skipper complaining on the Disneyland Jungle Cruise, Weird Al knew he had a song on his hands. Framing his track around a failed acting student, Al took full advantage of the bittersweet tones of Weezer. While overtly catchy, the lyrics are surprisingly dark and real, making it one of Yankovic's more tragic songs. To make sure his skipper dialogue sounded right, Al pored through old scripts and guidebooks from the Disney ride. In addition to researching the ride in detail, Yankovic even called in a few favors to get an authentic skipper costume from Disney to perform the song live 



With Weird Al's talent for wordplay, it shouldn't be surprising that he wrote a track using palindromes. Giving his best take on Bob Dylan, Yankovic delivers a solid impression as he rambles through some nonsense lyrics. Upon closer reading however, every phrase, like "Madam I'm Adam," reads the same forwards and backwards. The real feat however is that the gibberish lyrics sound exactly like the puzzling poetry Dylan would sing in his songs. For the music video, Yankovic parodies the flash cards from Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" so fans could read all the lines for themselves.
 
Before we get to our top pick, here are a few laughable mentions:



"Lame Claim To Fame"   
Mandatory Fun (2014) 


 
"Good Old Days" 
Even Worse (1988) 

"Genius in France" 

Poodle Hat (2003) 






Al has written a lot of funny lyrics over the years, but 'Dare To Be Stupid' found him writing knockout melodies as well. Unleashing catchy synth hooks on his listeners, Yankovic's Devo pastiche was arguably on par with any Devo song.  Al's keyboards sounded so good, that Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh said it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. Reversing classic idioms, Al made sure his lyrics were just as memorable as the music. A clear fan of the New Wave icons, Yankovic references at least ten different Devo clips in the video. Al even mentions mashed potatoes as a reference to Devo's favorite food item.