Weird Al has adapted to the Internet better than any other artist from the 80's. His Chamillionaire parody "White and Nerdy" has over 50 million views on YouTube, and is currently one of the site's most popular videos of all-time. The song was his career peak, going all the way to#9 on the Billboard Hot 100 (his previous best - "Eat It" at #12 in1984). Since then he's explored digital distribution which, for the first time in his three decade career, has allowed him to parody current events and songs that are popular right now. Really, it's hard to believe Weird Al survived at all - much less thrived - before iTunes and YouTube. He recently released The Essential Weird Al collects 38 of Al's best songs into two discs.
CollegeHumor: How did you decide which were the greatest hits from your distinguished career?Weird Al: It was tough. I've got twelve studio albums of material and I did have to leave off a lot of stuff that some fans think should have been on the essentials collection. There's some historically important ones missing. "My Bologna," isn't even on there, which was my first pseudo-hit. Even though My Bologna was historically important, it wasn't so brilliant I would consider it among my best work. So I had to weigh fan favorites with what I thought were songs that actually merited being on a best-of compilation.
CH: So you hand picked the songs yourself?WA: I did, yeah.
CH: When you were going through your earlier albums, did you rediscover any material that you'd forgotten about?WA: I don't think I'd actually literally forgotten about any of it but it was kinda nice to listen to some of the old tracks again that I hadn't heard in a while. It also was an opportunity to clean up a couple things. This new collection is completely remastered. It's not remixed, but we cleaned it up. I won't mention where exactly because I don't want people to obsess over it the way I did, but there were a couple songs that had a few little pops and ticks and just little things that probably most people have never heard before in their life but they'd been bugging me for 25 years.
View profile
Send a message
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
MySpace
