This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that may be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers.

Composing literature in palindromes is an example of constrained writing. The word "palindrome" was coined from the Greek roots palin (πάλιν; "again") and dromos (δρóμος; "way, direction") by the English writer Ben Jonson in the 17th century. The Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινικὴ επιγραφή; "crab inscription"), or simply karkinoi (καρκίνοι; "crabs"), alluding to the movement of crabs, such as an inscription that may be read backwards.

History[link]

The Sator Square.

Palindromes date back at least to 79 AD, as a palindrome was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, a city buried by ash in that year. This palindrome, called the Sator Square, consists of an entire sentence written in Latin: "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" ("The sower Arepo holds works wheels"). It is remarkable for the fact that the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, and so forth. Hence, it can be arranged into a word square that reads in four different ways: horizontally or vertically from either top left to bottom right or bottom right to top left.

A palindrome with the same property is the Hebrew palindrome, "We explained the glutton who is in the honey was burned and incinerated", (פרשנו רעבתן שבדבש נתבער ונשרף; PRShNW R`BTN ShBDBSh NTB`R WNShRP or parasnu ra`abhtan shebad'vash nitba'er venisraf), by Abraham ibn Ezra, referring to the halachic question as to whether a fly landing in honey makes the honey treif (non-kosher).

פ ר ש נ ו
ר ע ב ת ן
ש ב ד ב ש
נ ת ב ע ר
ו נ ש ר ף

Another Latin palindrome, "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" ("We go wandering at night and are consumed by fire", in which "In girum ire" is translated as "go wandering" instead of the literal "go in a circle", cf. Italian "andare in giro", "go strolling or wandering around"), was said to describe the behavior of moths. It is likely that this palindrome is from medieval rather than ancient times.

Byzantine Greeks often inscribed the palindrome, "Wash [the] sins, not only [the] face" ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ ("Nīpson anomēmata mē mōnan ōpsin", engraving "ps", the single Greek letter Ψ, psi), on baptismal fonts. This practice was continued in many English churches. Examples include the font at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham and also the font in the basilica of St. Sophia, Constantinople, the font of St. Stephen d'Egres, Paris; at St. Menin's Abbey, Orléans; at Dulwich College; and at the following churches: Worlingworth (Suffolk), Harlow (Essex), Knapton (Norfolk), St Martin, Ludgate (London), and Hadleigh (Suffolk).

Palindromes in ancient Sanskrit[link]

Palindromes of considerable complexity were experimented with in Sanskrit poetry.^[1] Complex palindromes appear in the 19th canto of the 8th-century epic poem Śiśupāla-vadha by Magha. It yields the same text if read forward, backward, down, up, or diagonally:

(Note: a hyphen indicates a continuation of same word.) The last four lines are an inversion of the first four and are not part of the verse. They are included here only so that its properties may be more easily discerned, as the up-and-down reading depends on re-reading the text back up again in each column.

The stanza translates as:

[That army], which relished battle (rasāhavā), contained allies who brought low the bodes and gaits of their various striving enemies (sakāranānārakāsakāyasādadasāyakā), and in it the cries of the best of mounts contended with musical instruments (vāhasāranādavādadavādanā).

The same work (Śiśupāla-vadha) also contains stanzas in which each line is a palindrome, and stanzas that may be read backward to give a new stanza (semordnilaps). Such stanzas are also found in the earlier work Kirātārjunīya.

This Sanskrit poem was written by "nandi-ghanta kavis" in kanda style.

सारस नयना घन जघ

नारचित रतार कलिक हर सार रसा

सार रसारह कलिकर

तारत चिरनाघ जनघ नायनसरसा |

Palindromes in Tamil poetry[link]

Palindromes are referred to in Tamil as "Maalai Maatru" (மாலை மாற்று). The earliest known palindromic verses (11 couplets) occur in the devotional poetry of the Shaivism saint Sambandhar who lived around the 7th Century C.E.

The first of these eleven verses runs thus:

யாமாமாநீ யாமாமா யாழீகாமா காணாகா

காணாகாமா காழீயா மாமாயாநீ மாமாயா

It refers to Shiva as the incomparable God, the one who plays the Veena, the beautiful one adorned with snakes, the one who destroyed Kama, whose abode is Sirkazhi, who also appears as Vishnu, and beseeches him (Shiva) to rid the devotee of impurities.

Palindromic verses are also to be found in Madhava Shivagnana Yogi's Kanchi Puranam (மாதவச்சிவஞானயோகிகள் காஞ்சிப் புராணம்) and in Mahavidvaan Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai's Thirunaagaik Kaaronap Puranam (மகாவித்துவான் மீனாட்சிசுந்தரம் பிள்ளை திருநாகைக் காரோணப் புராணம்).^[2]

Types[link]

Character, word, or line unit[link]

The most familiar palindromes, in English at least, are character-by-character: The written characters read the same backward as forward. Some examples of common palindromic words: civic, radar, level, rotor, kayak, reviver, racecar, redder, madam, toot, boob, malayalam, pop, noon, and refer. There are also palindromes where the unit of reversal is the word ("So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so") or line (as in the poem "Doppelganger" by J.A. Lindon). These are referred to as "word-unit palindromes" and "line-unit palindromes" respectively.^[3]

Phrases[link]

Palindromes often consist of a phrase or sentence, e.g.: "Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?", "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm", "Was it a rat I saw?" (where "rat" can also be "cat", "bat" or any other three-letter word ending in "at"), "A nut for a jar of tuna", "Do geese see God?", "Ma is as selfless as I am", "Dammit, I'm mad!", "A Toyota's a Toyota", and "A Santa lived as a devil at NASA". Punctuation, capitalization, and spacing are usually ignored, although some, such as "Rats live on no evil star" and "Step on no pets", include the spacing.

Famous English palindromes[link]

Some well-known English palindromes are, "Able was I ere I saw Elba",^[4] "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama!",^[5] "Madam, I'm Adam" or "Madam in Eden, I'm Adam", "Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod"^[6] and "Never odd or even". "Rise to vote, sir" was featured in an episode of The Simpsons.

Names[link]

Some people have names that are palindromes. A few common palindromic names are: Hannah, Maham, Ada, Anna, Bob, Eve, Otto, and Renner. Lon Nol (1913–1985) was Prime Minister of Cambodia. Nisio Isin is a Japanese novelist and manga writer, whose real name (西尾 維新, Nishio Ishin) is a palindrome when romanized using the Kunrei-shiki or the Nihon-shiki systems. (It is often written as NisiOisiN to emphasize this). Some persons have changed their name in order to make of it a palindrome (one example is actor Robert Trebor), while others were given a palindromic name at birth (such as the philologist Revilo P. Oliver and the Korean-American Mike Kim).^[7] Palindromic names are very common in Finland. Examples include, Olavi Valo, Emma Lamme, Sanna Rannas, Anni Linna and Asko Oksa. "Stanley Yelnats" is the name of a character in Holes, a 1998 novel and 2003 film.

Molecular biology[link]

Restriction enzymes recognize a specific sequence of nucleotides and produce a double-stranded cut in the DNA. While recognition sequences vary widely, with lengths of between 4 and 8 nucleotides, many of them are palindromic, which correspond to nitrogenous base sequences between complementary strands, which, when read from the 5' to 3' direction, are identical sequences.

Numbers[link]

A palindromic number is a number whose digits, with decimal representation usually assumed, are the same read backward, for example, 5885. They are studied in recreational mathematics where palindromic numbers with special properties are sought. A palindromic prime is a palindromic number that is a prime number, for example, 191 and 313.

The continued fraction of Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \sqrt{n} + \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor

is a repeating palindrome when Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): n
is an integer.

Dates[link]

Palindromic dates are of interest to recreational mathematicians and numerologists, and sometimes generate comment in the general media.^[8] Whether or not a date is palindromic depends on the style in which it is written. The table below shows some of the most common date formats and the most recent and next palindromic dates in those styles.

Some dates have more than one palindromic form. For example, the date September 29, 1929, may be written as a palindrome 3 ways. Without the year, it is 9/29. With the year, it is 9/29/29 or 9/29/1929. January 10, 2011 is a four-way palindrome, as 1/10/2011, 1/10/11, I/X/MMXI, or I/X/XI. A date can be a palindrome depending on how it is said. For example, the date October 20, 2010 may be written 10/20/2010 and spoken as, "Ten, twenty, twenty-ten."

In Sweden the common date-style is yyyymmdd and a palindrome-date is 20111102 (the 2^nd day of November, 2011).

Acoustics[link]

A palindrome in which a recorded phrase of speech sounds the same when it is played backward was discovered by composer John Oswald in 1974 while he was working on audio tape versions of the cut-up technique using recorded readings by William S. Burroughs. Oswald discovered in repeated instances of Burroughs speaking the phrase "I got" that the recordings still sound like "I got" when played backward.^[9][10]

In French, a more complex example has been identified with^{[citation needed]} "Une slave valse nue" (a Slavic girl waltzes naked).

Music[link]

Classical music[link]

Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 47 in G is nicknamed "the Palindrome". The third movement, minuet and trio is a musical palindrome. The second half of the piece is the same as the first but backwards.

The interlude from Alban Berg's opera Lulu is a palindrome, as are sections and pieces, in arch form, by many other composers, including James Tenney, and most famously Béla Bartók. George Crumb also used musical palindrome to text paint the Federico García Lorca poem "¿Por qué nací?", the first movement of three in his fourth book of Madrigals. Igor Stravinsky's final composition, The Owl and the Pussy Cat, is a palindrome.^{[citation needed]}

The first movement from Constant Lambert's ballet Horoscope (1938) is entitled "Palindromic Prelude". Lambert claimed that the theme was dictated to him by the ghost of Bernard van Dieren, who had died in 1936.^[11]

British composer Robert Simpson also composed music in the palindrome or based on palindromic themes; the slow movement of his Symphony No. 2 is a palindrome, as is the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 1. His hour-long String Quartet No. 9 consists of thirty-two variations and a fugue on a palindromic theme of Haydn (from the minuet of his Symphony No. 47). All of Simpson's thirty-two variations are themselves palindromic.

The music of Anton Webern is often palindromic. Webern, who had studied the music of the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac, was extremely interested in symmetries in music, be they horizontal or vertical. An example of horizontal or linear symmetry in Webern's music is the first phrase in the second movement of the symphony, Op. 21. A striking example of vertical symmetry is the second movement of the Piano Variations, Op. 27, in which Webern arranges every pitch of this dodecaphonic work around the central pitch axis of A4. From this, each downward reaching interval is replicated exactly in the opposite direction. For example, a G♯3—13 half-steps down from A4 is replicated as a B♭5—13 half-steps above.

Just as the letters of a verbal palindrome are not reversed, so are the elements of a musical palindrome usually presented in the same form in both halves. Although these elements are usually single notes, palindromes may be made using more complex elements. For example, Karlheinz Stockhausen's composition Mixtur, originally written in 1964, consists of twenty sections, called "moments", which may be permuted in several different ways, including retrograde presentation, and two versions may be made in a single program. When the composer revised the work in 2003, he prescribed such a palindromic performance, with the twenty moments first played in a "forwards" version, and then "backwards". Each moment, however, is a complex musical unit, and is played in the same direction in each half of the program.^[12] By contrast, Karel Goeyvaerts's 1953 electronic composition, Nummer 5 (met zuivere tonen) is an exact palindrome: not only does each event in the second half of the piece occur according to an axis of symmetry at the centre of the work, but each event itself is reversed, so that the note attacks in the first half become note decays in the second, and vice-versa. It is a perfect example of Goeyvaerts's aesthetics, the perfect example of the imperfection of perfection.^[13]

In classical music, a crab canon is a canon in which one line of the melody is reversed in time and pitch from the other. A large-scale musical palindrome covering more than one movement is called "chiasic", referring to the cross-shaped Greek letter "χ" (pronounced /ˈkaɪ/.) This is usually a form of reference to the crucifixion; for example, the "crucifixus" section of the Bach B-minor Mass. The purpose of such palindromic balancing is to focus the listener on the central movement, much as one would focus on the center of the cross in the crucifixion. Other examples are found in Bach's Cantata BWV 4, "Christ lag in Todesbanden", Handel's Messiah and the Fauré Requiem.^[14]

A table canon is a rectangular piece of sheet music intended to be played by two musicians facing each other across a table with the music between them, with one musician viewing the music upside down compared to the other. The result is somewhat like two speakers simultaneously reading the Sator square from opposite sides, except that it is typically in two-part polyphony rather than in unison.

Popular music[link]

Musical content[link]

Hüsker Dü's concept album Zen Arcade contains the songs, "Reoccurring Dreams" and "Dreams Reoccurring", the latter of which appears earlier on the album, but is actually the intro of the former song played in reverse. In a similar manner, The Stone Roses' first album contains the songs "Waterfall" and "Don't Stop", the latter of which is, in essence, the former performed backward. The 12" and CD formats of their single Elephant Stone feature the B-side "Full Fathom Five", which is an alternate mix of the title track played in reverse.

The title track of the 1992 album entitled UFO Tofu by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is said by its composer to be a musical palindrome.

In 2003, the city of San Diego, California commissioned sculptor Roman DeSalvo and composer Joseph Waters to create a public artwork in the form of a safety railing on the 25th Street overpass at F and 25th Streets. The result, Crab Carillon, is a set of 488 tuned chimes that may be played by pedestrians as they cross the overpass. Each chime is tuned to the note of a melody, composed by Waters. The melody is in the form of a palindrome, to accommodate walking in either direction.^[15]

In "Starálfur", from Sigur Rós's Ágætis byrjun the strings part is a palindrome.

The song "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon features a palindromic bass run performed by Bakithi Kumalo.

Lyrics[link]

The song, "I Palindrome I", by They Might Be Giants, features palindromic lyrics and imagery. The 27-word bridge is word-symmetrical.

"Weird Al" Yankovic's song, "Bob", from his 2003 album Poodle Hat, consists of rhyming palindromes and parodies the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". There is an accompanying video for the song which also parodies Dylan's video. Yankovic shows all of the palindromes on cue cards as they are being sung.

Baby Gramps is known for songs where the lyrics are made up of palindromes.

Names and titles[link]

In 1975, the Swedish pop group ABBA had a hit single entitled, "SOS", a unique occasion in which a song's title and the name of its recording artist are both palindromes.

The Grateful Dead's 1969 album Aoxomoxoa is a notable early use of a palindrome in the title of a popular music album.

In 1992, the grunge band Soundgarden released an EP called Satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas or SOMMS; the title is a palindrome and puns on the supposed connection between the Devil and heavy metal music.

On Boris and Sunn O)))'s collaborative album "Altar", the vinyl version included a full disc, double-sided bonus track entitled "Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas" (in reference to the Soundgarden EP of the same name), in which the various instruments (mainly guitars) are introduced one at a time on side one, and then fade out in reverse order on side two. Kim Thayil of Soundgarden appears on this track.

The Fall of Troy made a song with the famous palindrome "A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama" as the title.

The first and last tracks on Andrew Bird's album Noble Beast form a palindrome ("Oh No" and "On Ho!") and the seventh track is a palindrome in itself: "Ouo". He has also mentioned palindromes in earlier music, giving his songs names such as "11:11", "T'N'T", and "Fake Palindromes" (although the last title is not a palindrome itself). He also mentions palindromes in the lyrics of the song "I" and the "I" redux "Imitosis".

"racEcar" by Vitamin Party features a repeating chorus of "A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama" (the title itself is palindromic).

"Never Odd or Even", which was to be the title of the first album by Aleka's Attic, the band formed by the late River Phoenix, is a palindrome.^[16]

"If I Had a Hi-Fi", a 2010 cover album by American alternative rock band Nada Surf, is a palindrome.

Miles Davis and Black Sabbath both had albums called Live Evil. Inversely, Lynch Mob and Diamond Head had albums called Evil Live.

D.R.U.G.S. has two songs that are palindromes on the self-titled debut album, "Mr. Owl Ate My Metal Worm" and "Laminated E.T. Animal".

The Asian-American teenage Riot Grrrl band Emily's Sassy Lime's name is palindromic.

Comics[link]

Watchmen #5, "Fearful Symmetry", the first page mirrors the last (in terms of frame disposition), with the following pages mirroring each other before the center-spread is (broadly) symmetrical in layout.

"NogegoN", Volume 3 of Les Terres creuses, by Luc et François Schuiten, Les Humanoïdes Associés, (1990) : each frame has its mirror image.

Long palindromes[link]

The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the onomatopoeic tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) for a knock on the door. The Guinness Book of Records gives the title to detartrated, the preterit and past participle of detartrate, a chemical term meaning to remove tartrates. Rotavator, a trademarked name for an agricultural machine, is often listed in dictionaries. The term redivider is used by some writers, but appears to be an invented or derived term—only redivide and redivision appear in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Malayalam, an Indian language, is of equal length.

According to Guinness World Records, the Finnish word saippuakivikauppias (soapstone vendor), a 19-letter word, is claimed to be the world's longest palindromic word in everyday use. A meaningful derivative from it is, saippuakalasalakauppias (soapfish bootlegger). An even longer effort is saippuakuppinippukauppias (soap dish wholesale vendor). Almost equally long is the Estonian word kuulilennuteetunneliluuk (the hatch a bullet flies out of when exiting a tunnel).

In English, two palindromic novels have been published: Satire: Veritas by David Stephens (1980, 58,795 letters), and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo by Lawrence Levine (1986, 31,954 words).^[17] In French, Oulipo writer George Perec's "Grand Palindrome" (1969) is 5,556 letters in length.^[18][19] In Hebrew, Noam Dovev wrote a 333-word, 1221-letter palindromic story called, "Do god".^[20]

Biological structures[link]

Palindrome of DNA structure
A: Palindrome, B: Loop, C: Stem

In most genomes or sets of genetic instructions, palindromic motifs are found. The meaning of palindrome in the context of genetics is slightly different, however, from the definition used for words and sentences. Since the DNA is formed by two paired strands of nucleotides, and the nucleotides always pair in the same way (Adenine (A) with Thymine (T), Cytosine (C) with Guanine (G)), a (single-stranded) sequence of DNA is said to be a palindrome if it is equal to its complementary sequence read backward. For example, the sequence ACCTAGGT is palindromic because its complement is TGGATCCA, which is equal to the original sequence in reverse complement.

A palindromic DNA sequence may form a hairpin. Palindromic motifs are made by the order of the nucleotides that specify the complex chemicals (proteins) that, as a result of those genetic instructions, the cell is to produce. They have been specially researched in bacterial chromosomes and in the so-called Bacterial Interspersed Mosaic Elements (BIMEs) scattered over them. Recently^[when?] a research genome sequencing project discovered that many of the bases on the Y-chromosome are arranged as palindromes.^{[citation needed]} A palindrome structure allows the Y-chromosome to repair itself by bending over at the middle if one side is damaged.

It is believed that palindromes frequently are also found in proteins,^[21][22] but their role in the protein function is not clearly known. It has recently^[23] been suggested that the prevalence existence of palindromes in peptides might be related to the prevalence of low-complexity regions in proteins, as palindromes frequently are associated with low-complexity sequences. Their prevalence might also be related to an alpha helical formation propensity of these sequences,^[23] or in formation of proteins/protein complexes.^[24]

Computation theory[link]

In the automata theory, a set of all palindromes in a given alphabet is a typical example of a language that is context-free, but not regular. This means that it is, in theory, impossible for a computer with a finite amount of memory to reliably test for palindromes. (For practical purposes with modern computers, this limitation would apply only to incredibly long letter-sequences.)

In addition, the set of palindromes may not be reliably tested by a deterministic pushdown automaton and is not LR(k)-parsable. When reading a palindrome from left-to-right, it is, in essence, impossible to locate the "middle" until the entire word has been read completely.

It is possible to find the longest palindromic substring of a given input string in linear time.^[25][26]

Semordnilap[link]

Semordnilap is a name coined for a word or phrase that spells a different word or phrase backward. "semordnilap" is itself "palindromes" spelled backward. According to author O.V. Michaelsen, it was probably coined by logologist Dmitri A. Borgmann and appeared in Oddities and Curiosities, annotated by Martin Gardner, 1961. Semordnilaps are also known as volvograms,^[27] heteropalindromes, semi-palindromes, half-palindromes, reversgrams, mynoretehs, reversible anagrams,^[28] word reversals, or anadromes.^[29] They have also sometimes been called antigrams,^[29] though now, this term usually refers to anagrams with opposing meanings.

These words are very useful in constructing palindromic texts; together, each pair forms a palindrome, and they may be added on either side of a shorter palindrome in order to extend it.

The longest single-word English examples contain eight letters:

• stressed / desserts
• samaroid (resembling a samara) / dioramas
• rewarder / redrawer
• animal / lamina
• departer / retraped (construction based on the fact that verb trape is recorded as an alternative spelling of traipse)^[30]
• reporter / retroper (construction based on the fact that trope is recorded as a verb, meaning "to furnish with tropes")^[30]

Other examples include:

• was / saw
• god / dog
• gateman / nametag
• deliver / reviled
• straw / warts
• star / rats
• lived / devil
• live / evil
• diaper / repaid
• smart / trams
• spit / tips
• stop / pots
• bats / stab
• swap / paws

The poem Lost Generation is a line-unit semordnilap. When the lines are read in reverse order, it becomes new poem with the opposite meaning. Though the popular YouTube video shows the poem read in both directions, the poem ends with the words "unless you reverse it" inviting the reader to do so in their mind.

Non-English palindromes[link]

Palindromes in languages that use an alphabetic writing system work in essentially the same way as English palindromes. In languages that use a writing system other than an alphabet (such as Chinese), a palindrome is still a sequence of characters from that writing system that remains the same when reversed, though the characters now represent words rather than letters.

The treatment of diacritics varies. In languages such as Czech and Spanish, letters with diacritics or accents (except tildes) are not given a separate place in the alphabet, and thus preserve the palindrome whether or not the repeated letter has an ornamentation. However, in the Nordic languages, A, Å and Ä/Æ, as well as O and Ö/Ø, are all distinct letters and must be mirrored exactly to be considered a palindrome.

The longest palindrome in the Dutch language, according to the Dutch Guinness Book of World Records, is koortsmeetsysteemstrook, which translates into English as thermometer.

See also[link]

• Ambigram
• Anagram
• Antimetabole
• Backmasking
• Constrained writing
• List of palindromic places
• Palindromic number
• Palindromic polynomial
• Pangram
• Phonetic palindrome
• Su Hui (poet)
• Yreka, California for the palindromic Yreka Bakery and Yrella Gallery

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up palindrome or Appendix:Palindromic words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Palindrome

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Palindromes

• List of palindromes from Princeton Lexical Database.
• Palindromic Baby Names
• List of English Semordnilaps

"Weird Al" Yankovic
"Weird Al" Yankovic performing live in concert during his 2010 tour
Background information
Birth name	Alfred Matthew Yankovic
Also known as	"Weird Al" Yankovic
Born	(1959-10-23) October 23, 1959 (age 52)[1] Downey, California
Origin	Lynwood, California, United States
Genres	Parody, comedy, polka
Occupations	Record producer, satirist, parodist, singer-songwriter, musician, director, producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, accordion, keyboards, theremin
Years active	1976–present
Labels	RCA, Capitol, Scotti Brothers, Volcano
Associated acts	Dr. Demento
Website	weirdal.com

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (pronunciation: /ˈjæŋkəvɪk/;^[2] born October 23, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist. Yankovic is known for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts. Since his first-aired comedy song in 1976, he has sold more than 12 million albums (as of 2007),^[3] recorded more than 150 parody and original songs,^[4][5][6] and has performed more than 1,000 live shows.^[7] His works have earned him three Grammy Awards among nine nominations, four gold records, and six platinum records in the United States. Yankovic's first top ten Billboard album (Straight Outta Lynwood) and single ("White & Nerdy") were both released in 2006, nearly three decades into his career.

Yankovic's success comes in part from his effective use of music video to further parody popular culture, the song's original artist, and the original music videos themselves, scene-for-scene in some cases. He directed later videos himself and went on to direct for other artists including Ben Folds, Hanson, Black Crowes, and The Presidents of the United States of America. In addition to recording his albums, Yankovic wrote and starred in the film, UHF, and television show, The Weird Al Show. He has also made guest appearances on many television shows, in addition to starring in Al TV specials on MTV.^[1]

Early life[link]

Alfred was born in Downey, California, and raised in the town of Lynwood. He is the only child of Nick Louis Yankovic (June 4, 1917 – April 9, 2004)^[8] and Mary Elizabeth (née Vivalda; February 7, 1923 – April 9, 2004).^[8] His father was born in Kansas City, Kansas of Yugoslavian^[8][9] descent, and began living in California after serving during World War II;^[10][11] he believed "the key to success" was "doing for a living whatever makes you happy" and often reminded his son of this philosophy.^[10] Nick Yankovic married Mary Elizabeth Vivalda in 1949. Mary, who was of Italian and English descent, and had come to California from Kentucky, gave birth to Alfred ten years later.^[10]

Al's first accordion lesson, which sparked his career in music, was on the day before his sixth birthday. A door-to-door salesman traveling through Lynwood offered the Yankovic parents a choice of accordion or guitar lessons at a local music school. Yankovic claims the reason his parents chose accordion over guitar was "They figured there should be at least one more accordion-playing Yankovic in the world", referring to Frankie Yankovic, to whom he is not related directly.^[12] Yankovic said that "[his] parents chose the accordion because they were convinced it would revolutionize rock."^[9] He continued lessons at the school for three years before continuing to learn on his own.^[8] Yankovic's early accordion role models include Frankie Yankovic and Myron Floren (the accordionist on The Lawrence Welk Show).

In the 1970s, Yankovic was a big fan of Elton John and claims John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album "was partly how I learned to play rock 'n roll on the accordion."^[10] As for his influences in comedic and parody music, Yankovic lists artists including Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, Shel Silverstein and Frank Zappa "and all the other wonderfully sick and twisted artists that he was exposed to through the Dr. Demento Radio Show."^[8][13] Other sources of inspiration for his comedy come from Mad magazine,^[10] Monty Python,^[14] and the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker parody movies.^[15]

Yankovic began kindergarten a year earlier than most children, and he skipped the second grade. "My classmates seemed to think I was some kind of rocket scientist so I was labeled a nerd early on", he recalls.^[10] As his unusual schooling left him two years younger than most of his classmates, Yankovic was not interested in sports or social events at school. He was valedictorian of his senior class.^[10] Yankovic was active in his school's extracurricular programs, including the National Forensic League, a play based upon Rebel Without a Cause, the yearbook (for which he wrote most of the captions), and the Volcano Worshippers club, "which did absolutely nothing. We started the club just to get an extra picture of ourselves in the yearbook."^[10]

Yankovic attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo where he earned a degree in architecture.^[9]

Career[link]

Dr. Demento and early fame[link]

Yankovic received his first exposure via southern California and syndicated comedy radio personality Dr. Demento's radio show, saying "If there hadn't been a Dr. Demento, I'd probably have a real job now."^[16] In 1976, Dr. Demento spoke at Yankovic's school where the then 16 year old Yankovic gave him a homemade tape of original and parody songs performed on the accordion in Yankovic's bedroom into a "cheesy little tape recorder". The tape's first song was "Belvedere Cruisin'", about his family's Plymouth Belvedere, was played on Demento's comedy radio show, launching Yankovic's career. Demento said "'Belvedere Cruising' might not have been the very best song I ever heard, but it had some clever lines [...] I put the tape on the air immediately.".^[10][17] Yankovic also played at local coffeehouses, saying:

It was sort of like amateur music night, and a lot of people were like wannabe Dan Fogelbergs. They'd get up on stage with their acoustic guitar and do these lovely ballads. And I would get up with my accordion and play the theme from 2001. And people were kind of shocked that I would be disrupting their mellow Thursday night folk fest.^[18]

During Yankovic's sophomore year as an architecture student at Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo, he became a disc jockey at the university's radio station, KCPR. Yankovic said he had been nicknamed Weird Al by fellow students and "took it on professionally" as his persona for the station.^[10] In 1978, he released his first recording (as Alfred Yankovic), "Take Me Down", on the LP, Slo Grown, as a benefit for the Economic Opportunity Commission of San Luis Obispo County. The song mocked famous nearby landmarks such as Bubblegum Alley and the fountain toilets at the Madonna Inn.

In mid-1979, shortly before his senior year, "My Sharona" by The Knack was on the charts and Yankovic took his accordion into the restroom across the hall from the radio station (to take advantage of the echo chamber acoustics) and recorded a parody titled "My Bologna". He sent it to Dr. Demento, who played it to good response from listeners. Yankovic met The Knack after a show at his college and introduced himself as the author of "My Bologna". The Knack's lead singer, Doug Fieger, said he liked the song and suggested that Capitol Records vice president Rupert Perry release it as a single.^[10] "My Bologna" was released as a single with "School Cafeteria" as its B-side, and the label gave Yankovic a six-month recording contract. Yankovic, who was "only getting average grades" in his architecture degree, began to realize that he might make a career of comedic music.^[10]

On September 14, 1980, Yankovic was a guest on the Dr. Demento Show, where he was to record a new parody live. The song was called "Another One Rides the Bus", a parody of Queen's hit, "Another One Bites the Dust". While practicing the song outside the sound booth, he met Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, who told him he was a drummer and agreed to bang on Yankovic's accordion case to help Yankovic keep a steady beat during the song. They rehearsed the song just a few times before the show began.^[10] "Another One Rides the Bus" became so popular that Yankovic's first television appearance was a performance of the song on The Tomorrow Show (April 21, 1981) with Tom Snyder. On the show, Yankovic played his accordion, and again, Schwartz banged on the accordion case and provided comical sound effects.

Band and fame[link]

1981 brought Yankovic on tour for the first time as part of Dr. Demento's stage show. His stage act in a Phoenix, Arizona, nightclub caught the eye of manager Jay Levey, who was "blown away".^[10] Levey asked Yankovic if he had considered creating a full band and doing his music as a career. Yankovic admitted that he had, so Levey held auditions. Steve Jay became Yankovic's bass player, and Jay's friend Jim West played guitar. Schwartz continued on drums. Yankovic's first show with his new band was on March 31, 1982.^[7] Several days later, Yankovic and his band were the opening act for Missing Persons.

Yankovic recorded "I Love Rocky Road", (a parody of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" as recorded by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts) which was produced by Rick Derringer, in 1982. The song was a hit on Top 40 radio, leading to Yankovic's signing with Scotti Brothers Records. In 1983, Yankovic's first self-titled album was released on Scotti Bros. He released his second album "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D in 1984. The first single "Eat It", a parody of the Michael Jackson song "Beat It", became popular, thanks in part to the music video, a shot-for-shot parody of Jackson's "Beat It" music video, and what Yankovic described as his "uncanny resemblance" to Jackson. Peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 14, 1984,^[19] "Eat It" remained Yankovic's highest-charting single until "White & Nerdy" placed at number 9 in October 2006.^[20]

In 1985, Yankovic co-wrote and starred in a mockumentary of his own life titled The Compleat Al, which intertwined the facts of his life up to that point with fiction. The movie also featured some clips from Yankovic's trip to Japan and some clips from the Al TV specials. The Compleat Al was co-directed by Jay Levey, who would direct UHF four years later. Also released around the same time as The Compleat Al was The Authorized Al, a biographical book based on the film. The book, resembling a scrapbook, included real and fictional humorous photographs and documents.

Yankovic and his band toured as the opening act for The Monkees in mid-1987 for their second reunion tour of North America. Yankovic claims to have enjoyed touring with The Monkees, despite the fact "the promoter gypped us out of a bunch of money."^[21]

Yankovic also appeared on the Wendy Carlos recording of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" as the narrator in 1988. The album also included a sequel of Camille Saint-Saëns's composition The Carnival of the Animals titled the "Carnival of the Animals Part II", with Yankovic providing humorous poems for each of the featured creatures in the style of Ogden Nash, who had written humorous poems for the original. Rubén Valtierra joined the band on keyboards in 1991, allowing Yankovic to concentrate more on singing and increasing his use of the stage space during concerts.

A factual biographical booklet of Yankovic's life, written by Dr. Demento, was released with the 1994 box set compilation Permanent Record: Al in the Box.^[10] The Dr. Demento Society, which issues yearly Christmas re-releases of material from Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes, often includes unreleased tracks from Yankovic's vaults, such as "Pacman", "It's Still Billy Joel To Me" or the live version of "School Cafeteria".

New look and career to present[link]

On January 24, 1998, Yankovic had LASIK eye surgery to correct his extreme myopia.^[22] In the same period, he shaved off his moustache and grew out his hair, thus radically changing his signature look (he had previously shaved his mustache in 1983 for the video of "Ricky" to resemble Desi Arnaz and 1996 for the "Amish Paradise" video). Yankovic reasoned, "If Madonna's allowed to reinvent herself every 15 minutes, I figure I should be good for a change at least once every 20 years."^[23] He parodied the reaction to this "new look" in a commercial for his nonexistent MTV Unplugged special. The commercial featured Yankovic in the short-haired wig from the music video for Hanson's "River", claiming his new look was an attempt to "get back to the core of what I'm all about", that being "the music".^[24]

Three of his latest albums feature the longest songs Yankovic has ever released. The "Albuquerque" track from Running with Scissors is 11 minutes and 23 seconds; "Genius in France" from Poodle Hat runs for 8 minutes and 56 seconds; "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" from Straight Outta Lynwood is 10 minutes and 53 seconds long. Before 2007 (apart from a one-off performance of "Albuquerque" in Albuquerque, New Mexico),^[25] these "epic" songs were not performed live in their entirety due to their length and complexity. (See Live performances for details)

Yankovic has also started to explore digital distribution of his songs. On October 7, 2008, Yankovic released to the iTunes Store "Whatever You Like", a parody of the T.I. song of the same title, which Yankovic said he had come up with two weeks before. Yankovic said that the benefit of digital distribution is that "I don't have to wait around while my songs get old and dated—I can get them out on the Internet almost immediately."^[26] In 2009, Yankovic released four more songs: "Craigslist" on June 16, "Skipper Dan" on July 14, "CNR" on August 4, and "Ringtone" on August 25. These five digitally released songs were packaged as a digital EP titled Internet Leaks, with "Whatever You Like" retroactively included in the set.^[27]

In 2011, Yankovic completed his thirteenth studio album. This album, titled Alpocalypse, is his first studio album since Straight Outta Lynwood, and was released on June 21, 2011.^[28] The album contains the five songs from the previous Internet Leaks digital download release, a polka medley called "Polka Face", a song called "TMZ" for which Bill Plympton created an animated music video, and five other new songs.^[29][30]

Yankovic had reported an interest in parodying Lady Gaga's material,^[31] and on April 20 announced that he had written and recorded a parody of "Born This Way" titled "Perform This Way", to be the lead single for his new album. However, upon first submitting it to Lady Gaga's manager for approval (which Yankovic does as a courtesy), he was not given permission to release it commercially. As he had previously done under similar circumstances (with his parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"), Yankovic then released the song for free on the internet. Soon afterwards, Gaga's manager admitted that he had denied the parody of his own accord without forwarding the song to his client, and upon seeing it online, Lady Gaga granted permission for the parody. Yankovic has stated that all of his proceeds from the parody and its music video will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign, to support the human rights themes of the original song.^[32][33]

Yankovic was also a judge for the 10th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[34]

Personal life[link]

Yankovic married Suzanne Krajewski in 2001; their daughter, Nina, was born in 2003.^[35] They also have a pet cockatiel named Bo Veaner^[8] and dog named Bambu. They used to have a pet poodle, named Bela (pictured atop Yankovic's head on the cover of his album, Poodle Hat). Yankovic identifies as Christian and has stated that a couple from his church appeared on the cover of Poodle Hat.^[36][37]

Yankovic changed his diet to become a vegan in 1992, after a former girlfriend gave him the book Diet for a New America and he felt "it made [...] a very compelling argument for a strict vegetarian diet."^[38] When asked how he can "rationalize" performing at events such as the Great American Rib Cook-Off when he is a vegan, he replied, "The same way I can rationalize playing at a college even though I’m not a student anymore."^[39]

In 2004, Yankovic's parents were found dead in their Fallbrook, California, home, apparently the victims of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning from their fireplace that had been recently lit. The flue was closed, which trapped the carbon monoxide gas inside the house, suffocating them.^[35] Several hours after his wife notified him of his parents' death, Yankovic went on with his concert in Mankato, Minnesota,^[40] saying that "since my music had helped many of my fans through tough times, maybe it would work for me as well" and that it would "at least ... give me a break from sobbing all the time." Although Yankovic played the concert as planned, a scheduled meet and greet following the concert was canceled.^[41][42]

Music career[link]

While Yankovic's song parodies (such as "Eat It") have resulted in success on the Billboard charts (see List of singles by "Weird Al" Yankovic), he recorded an equally large number of original humorous songs ("You Don't Love Me Anymore" and "One More Minute").^[8] His work depends largely on the satirizing of popular culture, including television (see The TV Album), movies ("The Saga Begins"), food (see The Food Album), popular music ("Bohemian Polka", "Polkarama"), and sometimes issues in contemporary news ("Headline News"). Yankovic claims he has no intention of writing "serious" music. In his reasoning, "There's enough people that do unfunny music. I'll leave the serious stuff to Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline."^[43]

Although many of Yankovic's songs are parodies of contemporary radio hits, it is rare that the song's primary topic lampoons the original artist as a person, or the song itself. Most Yankovic songs consist of the original song's music, with a separate, unrelated set of amusing lyrics. Yankovic considered that his first true satirical song was "Smells Like Nirvana", which references unintelligible lyrics in Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit".^[44] Other satirical songs include "Achy Breaky Song", which refers to the song "Achy Breaky Heart", "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long", which refers to the repetitious lyrics in "Got My Mind Set on You", the unreleased "It's Still Billy Joel to Me", and Perform This Way", set to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way".

Yankovic's humor normally lies more in creating unexpected incongruity between an artist's image and the topic of the song, contrasting the style of the song with its content (such as the songs "Amish Paradise", "White & Nerdy", and "You're Pitiful"), or in pointing out trends or works which have become pop culture clichés (such as "eBay" and "Don't Download This Song").

Yankovic is the sole writer for all his songs and, for "legal and personal reasons", does not accept parody submissions or ideas from fans.^[8] There exists, however, one exception to this rule in the case of "Like a Surgeon". Madonna was reportedly talking with a friend and happened to wonder aloud when Yankovic was going to turn her "Like a Virgin" into "Like a Surgeon". Madonna's friend was a mutual friend of Yankovic's manager, Jay Levey, and eventually Yankovic himself heard the story from Levey.^[10]

Unlike other parody artists such as Allan Sherman, Yankovic strives to keep the backing music in his parodies the same as the original. While Sherman reproduced them orchestrally, Yankovic and his band essentially play the original song with new lyrics. Instead of using instrumental versions of the original songs, Yankovic and his band transcribe the original song by ear and re-record the song for Yankovic's parody version.^[45] Sometimes artists whose work Yankovic parodies perform on the recordings,i.e. Dire Straits members Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher perform on Yankovic's parody of Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" and "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*".

Yankovic also includes a medley of various songs on most albums, each one reinterpreted as a polka, with the choruses or memorable lines of various songs juxtaposed for humorous effect. Yankovic has been known to say that converting these songs to polka was "...the way God intended". Because the polkas have become a staple of Yankovic's albums, he has said he tries to include one on each album because "fans would be rioting in the streets, I think, if I didn't do a polka medley."^[46]

Some of Yankovic's original songs are "style parodies" for which he chooses a band's entire body of work to honor/parody, rather than any single hit by that band. Such bands include Rage Against the Machine with "I'll Sue Ya" (which features many aspects of the hit song "Killing in the Name"), Devo with "Dare to Be Stupid", Talking Heads with "Dog Eat Dog", Frank Zappa with "Genius in France", Nine Inch Nails with "Germs", and Queen with "Ringtone".^[47] Others are style parodies in the style of a genre of music, rather than a specific band (for example, country music with "Good Enough For Now" and charity records with "Don't Download This Song").

Yankovic has contributed original songs to several films ("This Is the Life" from Johnny Dangerously; "Polkamon" from the movie Pokémon: The Movie 2000, and a parody of the James Bond title sequence in Spy Hard), in addition to his own film, UHF. Other songs of his have appeared in films or television series as well, such as "Dare to Be Stupid" in The Transformers: The Movie.

One of Yankovic's recurring jokes involves the number 27. It is mentioned in the lyrics of several songs, and seen on the covers for Running With Scissors, Poodle Hat^[48] and Straight Outta Lynwood. He had originally just pulled the number 27 as a random figure to use in filling out lyrics, but as his fans started to notice the reuse of the number after the first few times, he began to purposely drop references to 27 within his lyrics, videos, and album covers. He explains that "It's just a number I started using that people started attaching a lot of importance to."^[49] Other recurring jokes revolve around the names Bob (the Al TV interviews often mention the name,^[50] and a song called "Bob" is featured on Poodle Hat), Frank (e.g. "Frank's 2000" TV"), and the surname "Finkelstein" (e.g. the music video for "I Lost on Jeopardy", or Fran Drescher's character, Pamela Finkelstein, in UHF). Also, a hamster called Harvey the Wonder Hamster is a recurring character in The Weird Al Show and the Al TV specials, as well as the subject of an original song on Alapalooza. Other recurring jokes include Yankovic borrowing, or being owed, $5. In a number of Al TV interviews, he often asks if he can borrow $5, being turned down every time. This motif also occurs in "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?", in which his deceased friend owes him $5. Another recurring joke is his attraction to female nostrils or nostrils in general. This also appears in numerous Al TV interviews as well as in several of his songs ("Albuquerque" and "Wanna B Ur Lovr" to name a few.) Yankovic also asks his celebrity guests if they could "shave his back for a nickel." This also appears in the song "Albuquerque". Yankovic has also put two backmasking messages into his songs. The first, in "Nature Trail to Hell", said "Satan Eats Cheez Whiz"; the second, in "I Remember Larry", said "Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands."^[51]

Yankovic's career in novelty and comedy music has outlasted many of his "mainstream" parody targets, such as Toni Basil, MC Hammer, and Men Without Hats.^[52][53] Yankovic's continued success (including the top 10 single "White & Nerdy" and album Straight Outta Lynwood in 2006) has enabled him to escape the one-hit wonder stigma often associated with novelty music.^[54]

Music videos[link]

While Yankovic's musical parodies generally do not include references to the songs or the artists of the original songs, Yankovic's music videos will sometimes parody the original song's music video in whole or in part. Most notably, the video for "Smells Like Nirvana" uses an extremely similar set to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", including using several of the same actors. This video contended with "Smells like Teen Spirit" at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards for Best Male Video. Other videos that draw directly from those of the original song include "Eat It", "Fat", "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*", "Bedrock Anthem", "Headline News", "It's All about the Pentiums", "Amish Paradise", "Like a Surgeon", and "White & Nerdy". The video for "Dare to Be Stupid" is, as stated by Yankovic, a style parody in general of Devo videos.^[55]

Several videos have included appearances by notable celebrities in addition to Yankovic and his band. Dr. Demento appeared in several of Yankovic's earlier videos, such as "I Love Rocky Road" and "Ricky". Actor Dick Van Patten is featured in both "Smells Like Nirvana" and "Bedrock Anthem"; Drew Carey, Emo Philips and Phil LaMarr appeared in "It's All About the Pentiums"; Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Donny Osmond, Judy Tenuta and Seth Green appeared in "White & Nerdy"; and Ruth Buzzi and Pat Boone appeared in "Gump". The video for "I Lost on Jeopardy" includes an appearance by Greg Kihn, the artist whose song, "Jeopardy", was being parodied, along with Don Pardo and Art Fleming, Jeopardy's original announcer and host, as themselves. Florence Henderson played Yankovic's Amish wife in "Amish Paradise".

While most videos that Yankovic creates are aired on music channels such as MTV and VH1, Yankovic worked with animation artists to create music videos for release with extended content albums. The DualDisc version of Straight Outta Lynwood features six videos set to songs from the release, including videos created by Bill Plympton and John Kricfalusi; one video, "Weasel Stomping Day" was created by the producers of the show Robot Chicken, and aired as a segment of that program. As of fall 2010, Yankovic is again collaborating with Bill Plympton to create a video for a new song ("TMZ") which will appear on his upcoming album.^[30]

Reactions from original artists[link]

Under the "fair use" provision of U.S. copyright law, affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, one does not need permission to record a parody.^[56] However, as a personal rule, and as a means of maintaining good relationships within the music community, Yankovic has always requested permission from the original artist before recording his parodies.^[8] He claims that only about two to three percent of the artists he approaches for parody permission deny his requests.^[57] Also, according to Stanford Libraries, fair use is unlikely to justify a parody song that parodies more than a few lines of song lyrics from an existing song.^[58]

Positive[link]

Michael Jackson was a big fan of Yankovic, and Yankovic claimed Jackson "had always been very supportive" of his work.^[57] Jackson twice allowed him to parody his songs ("Beat It" and "Bad" became "Eat It" and "Fat", respectively). When Jackson granted Yankovic permission to do "Fat", Jackson allowed him to use the same set built for his own "Badder" video from the Moonwalker video. Though Jackson allowed "Eat It" and "Fat", he requested that Yankovic not record a parody of "Black or White", titled "Snack All Night", because he felt the message was too important. This refusal, coming shortly after the commercial failure of Yankovic's movie UHF in theaters, had initially set Yankovic back; he later recognized this as a critical time, as in searching for new parodies, he came across Nirvana and leading to a revitalization of his career with "Smells Like Nirvana".^[57] Yankovic has performed a concert-only parody "Snack All Night" in some of his live shows.^[25] Yankovic had a cameo appearance, along with many other celebrities, in Jackson's music video for "Liberian Girl".

Yankovic performing "The Saga Begins" in Auckland, New Zealand on March 10, 2007.

Dave Grohl of Nirvana said that the band felt they had "made it" after Yankovic recorded "Smells Like Nirvana", a parody of the grunge band's smash hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit".^[8] On his Behind the Music special, Yankovic stated that when he called Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain to ask if he could parody the song, Cobain gave him permission, then paused and asked, "Um... it's not gonna be about food, is it?" Yankovic responded with, "No, it'll be about how no one can understand your lyrics." According to members of Nirvana interviewed for Behind the Music, when they saw the video of the song, they laughed hysterically. Additionally, Cobain described Yankovic as "a musical genius".^[59]

Mark Knopfler approved Yankovic's parody of the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" for use in the film UHF on the provision that Knopfler himself be allowed to play lead guitar on the parody which was later titled "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*".^[60] Yankovic commented on the legal complications of the parody in the DVD audio commentary for UHF, explaining "We had to name that song 'Money for Nothing 'slash' Beverly Hillbillies 'asterisk' because the lawyers told us that had to be the name. Those wacky lawyers! What ya gonna do?"^[61] The Permanent Record: Al in the Box booklet referred to the song's "compound fracture of a title."^[10] When a fan asked about the song's title, Yankovic shared his feelings on the title, replying "That incredibly stupid name is what the lawyers insisted that the parody be listed as. I'm not sure why, and I've obviously never been very happy about it."^[62]

The Presidents of the United States of America were so pleased with "Gump", Yankovic's parody of their song "Lump", that they ended the song with his last line instead of their own ("And that's all I have to say about that") on the live recording of "Lump" featured on the compilation album Pure Frosting. In 2008, Yankovic directed the music video for their song "Mixed Up S.O.B."

Don McLean was reportedly pleased with "The Saga Begins", a parody of "American Pie", and told Yankovic that the parody's lyrics sometimes enter his mind during live performances.^[63] His parody not only replicates the music from the original Don McLean song, but it replicates the multi-layered rhyming structure in the verses and chorus. Additionally, George Lucas loved the song and a Lucasfilm representative told Yankovic, "You should have seen the smile on his face."^[64]

Chamillionaire was also very pleased, even putting Yankovic's parody "White & Nerdy" (a parody of "Ridin'") on his official MySpace page before it was on Yankovic's own page. Chamillionaire stated in an interview, "He's actually rapping pretty good on it, it's crazy [...] I didn't know he could rap like that. It's really an honor when he does that. [...] Weird Al is not gonna do a parody of your song if you're not doing it big."^[65] In September 2007, Chamillionaire credited "White & Nerdy" for his recent Grammy win, stating "That parody was the reason I won the Grammy, because it made the record so big it was undeniable. It was so big overseas that people were telling me they had heard my version of Weird Al's song."^[66]