Pigs Are Flying and Weird Al is #1

25 Jul, 2014

Mandatory Fun, the new album from parody maestro Weird Al Yankovic, has debuted at No 1 this week on Billboard’s charts, according to preliminary data.

The 54-year-old Californian, who released his first album in 1983, has sold just over 104,000 copies of his record. He held off competition from the singer Jason Mraz, whose new album, Yes!, sold under 84,000 copies.

The star – real name Alfred Matthew Yankovic – who created a blueprint for spoof videos which is still followed by today’s viral parodies, was shocked at his latest success: “Even the notion of it happening nearly caused my head to explode,” Yankovic told The News. “I never thought it was an option for me as someone making comedy albums.”

It is not however, Yankovic’s first time shifting records – his parody of tracks such as Michael Jackson’s Beat It (Eat It) and Toni Basil’s Mickey (Ricky) lead to four gold and six platinum discs in the 1980s.

The comedian’s recent popularity has been helped by his choice of songs to parody – Robin Thicke, Lorde, Iggy Azalea, Pharrell – and also by his unrelenting attention to his Twitter account: Yankovic recently said that he tries to respond to every Twitter message from his millions of followers. He also drip-fed fun for an eight-day period earlier this month, releasing a new video parody every day in the run up to the album’s release.

Mandatory Fun is Yankovic’s 14th album, and his best-selling since Straight Outta Lynwood, which was released in 1991 and sold 73,000 copies in its first week.

The last comedy album to reach No 1 in the US was Allan Sherman’s My Son, the Nut in 1963.

The Guardian 

Image Billboard 

Mentioned In This Post: