'Weird Al' Yankovic Announces MANDATORY WORLD Tour
The MANDATORY WORLD TOUR!
Do people enjoy “Weird Al” Yankovic because he’s funny or because he’s not that funny? The comedian, who specializes in song parodies, just released his fourteenth studio album, “Mandatory Fun,” which features his class-clown mangling of hits by Lorde, Iggy Azalea, and Pharrell Williams, among others. It débuted at No. 1, selling more than a hundred thousand copies in its first week.
Considering the post-digital slump in music sales—a hit album a decade ago could sell as many as a million copies in a week; this year, Sia’s “1000 Forms of Fear” entered the charts at No. 1 by selling only fifty-two thousand copies—this might be the biggest first week for a comedy album ever. But what is it that Weird Al actually does? We don’t laugh at his songs, yet we delighted by his presence in the world of pop culture. With his parodic versions of hit songs, this somehow ageless fifty-four-year-old has become popular not because he is immensely clever—though he can be—but because he embodies how many people feel when confronted with pop music: slightly too old and slightly too square. That feeling never goes away, and neither has Al, who has sold more than twelve million albums since 1979.Yankovic grew up in Lynwood, a suburb of Los Angeles, and learned the accordion as a child, playing polka and other genres. Inspired by satirists like Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman—the previous No. 1 comedy album was Sherman’s “My Son, the Nut,” in 1963—Yankovic began to create his own parodies. As his Twitter bio succinctly says, he’s “the Eat It guy.” In 1984, his version of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” seemed almost as popular as Jackson’s original and, on MTV, made a star out of a goofball with bad glasses, curly hair (longer now, but still not gray), and a taste for Hawaiian shirts. Jackson sang about the pointlessness of violence; Yankovic used the handiest rhyme available and turned “Beat It” into a song about finishing your dinner. His video re-creates Jackson’s famous red-leather style and adds gang members armed with utensils, which was sufficient to push Yankovic’s song up to No. 12 on the Billboard singles chart and earn him a Grammy.
But the story of "Weird Al" Yankovic's stunning career resurgence now has another chapter. The comedian-singer has unveiled an epic international tour.
"Weird Al's" 2015 Mandatory World Tour starts May 12 for a five-night stand at Planet Hollywood, and visits dozens of cities across North America through the summer, including a slot on the bill for the previously-announced Governors Ball. On Sept. 24, he'll play Grona Lund in Stockholm, Sweden to begin a European run that includes dates in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland.
Shows in Australia and New Zealand will be announced in due course, while "Weird Al" has a few more shows on the go which can't be announced yet for "various legal/contractual reason."
In a post on his Facebook page, "Weird Al" took the time to settle-down those fans who were frustrated he wasn't coming to their town. He wrote, "you may have noticed there are a few holes in my otherwise packed touring schedule. This is because some dates haven't been completely confirmed (like the Australia / NZ dates), and some dates we're not allowed to announce yet for various legal/contractual reasons. All I can say is, please be patient… don't give up hope quite yet… there are still a few more 2015 tour dates to be announced."
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