I'm very analytical, I'm very precise. Al Yankovic More Quotes by Al Yankovic More Quotes From Al Yankovic A lot of my cartoon voices are basically just variations on my natural voice. Al Yankovic variation voice cartoon I don't watch anything on a regular basis - I tend to binge-watch things. Al Yankovic binge bases watches Well I've made no secret of my life long love of MAD Magazine, it's probably my first and greatest influence in terms of my comic sensibilities. I've known John [Ficarra] for many years, and we've been friends. About four or five months ago, at a dinner in New York, John made the very nice offer of my being guest editor for an issue of MAD and I thought about it for about half a nanosecond and decided that was a pretty good idea. Al Yankovic nice new-york years It fit pretty nicely into my schedule because we'd pretty much finished the bulk of promotion for Mandatory Fun and were just getting geared up for the World Tour so this was a nice time for me to be working on it. Al Yankovic schedules nice fun I've always enjoyed animation and voiceover work. That's something that I've been proactive about. Al Yankovic animation proactive enjoyed I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor. Al Yankovic emo couple thinking I decided that I wanted to be a voice on every animated cartoon in the history of the world - even shows that haven't been on the air for a very long time, that's going to be harder to pull off. Al Yankovic voice air long Not any specific one, but I was a huge fan of Frank Jacobs, I guess he wrote the plurality of the song parodies for MAD, Sam Hart, a few others, but that was also where I was first exposed to the art form of song parodies. Al Yankovic mad song art I think I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature. Al Yankovic mad editors thinking I'm known for being an up, high-energy, and optimistic kind of guy. Al Yankovic optimistic guy energy I do a lot of different things, sometimes at the same time, and it's very difficult to figure out where I fit. Al Yankovic fit different sometimes I'm always a little leery about doing shows where I'm not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes. After that, I made the decision to headline no matter what, even if I was playing to seven people. I wanted people to be there to see me. Al Yankovic decision missing people There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me. Al Yankovic fashion clever song Sometimes I get, "Have you ever thought about doing real music?" I like to think the music I do is real, it just happens to be funny. Al Yankovic real sometimes thinking The music has always been my bread and butter, and I've focused more of my attention on that. Al Yankovic bread-and-butter bread attention I've always known that if I recorded an album, it would come out, and people would enjoy it! Whereas if I wrote a movie script, chances are better than even that I'd just be another guy in L.A. with a movie script in his drawer. Al Yankovic scripts guy people I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it. Al Yankovic trying laughing thinking I start with a comprehensive list of all the recent songs that have been big hits - and then I go down that list and see if I can come up with funny ideas for them. I can always come up with ideas, but not necessarily good ones! Al Yankovic lists song ideas I like to think that I've gotten better at what I do. I spend more time and pay more attention to detail album after album. But pretty much it's stayed the same. Al Yankovic details albums thinking I do original songs in the style of other artists, where I try to learn all their musical idiosyncrasies and try to do something that sounds like them and yet is a bit more sick and twisted. Al Yankovic sick artist song
