I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've got
Could see all kinds of things other people could not!
So then why get upset if somebody like me
Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?
Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don’t make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely.
That's a big part of my life - doing things that I'm not prepared to do. Doing things that I don't know how to do, and keep doing them until I get good at them. I always try to put myself out of my comfort zone and out of my depth, and hopefully somewhere along the line I'll catch up.
At this point I've got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when 'Weird Al' wants to go parody, it's not meant to make them look bad... it's meant to be a tribute.
One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.
It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
In a genre where most of the artists are one-hit wonders, I've been able to hang around longer than most "serious" acts. I pride myself in being a very talented leech.