Ahead of a Syracuse, New York, stop on his “Bigger & Weirder” tour, Yankovic revealed to Syracuse.com in an interview published this week that he was offered “a nice pile of money” to appear in a commercial for business-focused software, but he backed out once he realized the ad would involve AI. “I’m not a fan of AI,” he said.
Man, the name was already there, Weird A.I Yankovic
Good for him, but it really is a shame that this mindset is rare enough to warrant a news article.
I always admired Weird Al and now I admire him even more.
I can’t tell the difference between Al and AI
That’s why I use the Atkinson Hyperlegible font. Everything is very clearly distinct. lI1, O0, etc. It’s amazing how hard it is to find a good font for this purpose!
The first one uses U+006C l LATIN SMALL LETTER L and the second one utilizes U+0049 I LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I
If we compare them side by side (U+006C is placed before U+0049):
lI
It’s obvious that U+006C is taIler than U+0049.
To tell the difference between Al and AI, just look at the height of the second letter.
If the second letter is taller, OP wanted to write Al as in Weird Al Yankovic. If the second letter is the same height as the first, the user wrote AI as in Artificial Intelligence. If the second letter is shorter than the first, OP is either using a Turkic keyboard or being an idiot.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Wow, I have croscore fonts on my web browser because web fingerprinting and shit but like dayum, I and l are literally rendered the same pixel by pixel. Unless I zoom in 500%, then the L is 2 pixels taller. Good thing I have a copy of OpenDyslexic that I can turn on for shit like this. I am not dyslexic but still.
wait till ya learn about the Dotless I: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotless_I
Al stands for Absolute Legend.
deleted by creator
The easiest way to tell AI from Al is to remember that AI is Al and Al sounds like AI
knew as a kid i picked him as a hero of mine for a reason.
He’s one of the only celebrities that I feel like has stood the test of time and not been revealed as a shitty person
the only other person in hollywood i would put on the same level is jack black (que people telling me bad stuff about jack i didn’t know about before.) P. much everyone else there or from there I don’t care about or think are garbage people.
Yeah I’m gonna be that guy. He ended Tenacious D over Kyle making a joke about Trump not getting shot.
Què?
Keanu Reeves
Opp, him to, he’s not one of my youth heros but your deff right.
In case the size of Weird Al’s balls was in question, here’s his response to a fan when the people who have the rights to his movie didn’t release it right away in Australia.
“dooont download this soooong”
Terrible movie though
You shut your whore mouth
We must have watched a different movie.
I watched to 2022 movie “Weird: The AL Yankovic Story” It was crap, it would have been much better off as an honest biography.
Up until this comment, I thought everyone was talking about U/H/F
A few years ago I saw an interview with Emo Phillips and he held up a royalty check he’d just gotten in the mail for his appearance in that movie. It was for $1.37 or some such. He called UHF “the gift that keeps on giving”.
What do you mean? They very faithfully recreated his rise to fame exactly as it happened.
I was there as it happened, perhaps my memory is a little fuzzy.
Weird. I watched that same movie and it wasn’t crap. It was brilliant and entertaining.
An honest biography would be worth watching, but infinitely more boring.
It was definitely weird
Yankovic is well into the “I don’t fucking give a fuck” stage of life and could easily have just said “Fuck yeah” like a certain pot smoking rapper performing at a controversial political event or the comedians that are OK with blood money.
I am happy people like him exist.
edit: typo/spaling fix
fairly sure hes been like this all his life.
He’s been in that stage since before Another One Rides The Bus… so like, always.
I am extremely wary of putting people on pedestals, especially people who I don’t even know personally. I will say though, the shit Weird Al keeps doing has me saying ‘well good for you, hell yeah’ pretty much always.
Yeah there are a few famous people in this world that actually seem to be in that camp. Keanu Reeves, Terry Crews, Weird Al, Steve Wozniak, Bernie Sanders…those are just a few of the rare ones I like.
Mr Rogers, Dolly Parton
Nichelle Nichols
He also turned down a $5 million offer to do a beer commercial in the 1980s because he didn’t want to promote alcohol to his fans. This guy is a legend.
Good Guy Al
Not to be confused with good guy AI
it’s like actors appearing in gambling ads. I immediately lose respect and am disinterested in any new features they are in, as I just can’t separate them from such a despicable role
Then you’re uninterested.
Yep, same for me lately, seeing actors shilling bullshit is just like…why? Their millions just isn’t enough, need mmoooooorrrre.
The DSM needs to start classifying this shit. It’s a mental illness
Absolutely, was just talking about this yesterday, if nothing else it at least needs to start becoming more socially unacceptable to be so unbelievably greedy.
I’ve been seeing a lot of Beckham.
Al > AI
Aye
This is hurting my eye.
Weird Al > AGI
He’s greater than a lot of things. Stand up human being.
Weird Al doesn’t want to become Shitty AI.
It’s remarkable how pretty much every last person that I had respect for before the AI craze have been against or at least wary of it, with none of them going all-in on the concept.
Meanwhile, both personally and internet-wide, every single person that I already was familiary with who has come out unambiguously simping for AI has been someone I already thought was just insufferable.
This is a terrible take. It’s not an “Al craze”, he’s been around for years and years at this point, and he’s way more than just a concept.
And I think it’s unfair to cast people that agree with him as “simping for Al”, just because we agree with him ffs
That took me a second there…
Why did we ever make I and l look the same…
Amazing pattern isnt it?
We sure are a likeable bunch of irrationally hate-filled Neo-Luddites, aren’t we? We make a great angry mob. I can’t wait to see what we can all blindly hate next!
We have never used AI and we never will.
Funny of you to invoke the Luddites. Have you ever actually read about the Luddites beyond the pop-culture use of them as dismissive of people reluctant about technology? They were far from irrationally hate-filled.
They objected to the mass unemployment, child labor, and pathetic wages of the time. Living conditions for working class had broadly worsened. Significantly facilitated by technology that facilitated the owners inflicting those conditions. The technology had undermined the leverage of the working class. Rather than the technology making it better for all, it was a way to concentrate wealth into a smaller few and harm the welfare of others. So in early days, they would damage the instruments of the industrial exploitation. The government response was to make such damage to property even without any personal injury punishable by death, and started killing people of the movement before the movement escalated to any violence on people, protecting the wealthy at the expense of the working class.
Anyway, folks have similarly offered a great deal of legitimate grievances on the realities of AI usage, it also is far from irrational. For the folks referenced in this article, it’s how the technology in practice has harmed art, and it’s hard to disagree with that sentiment as we get bombarded by waves of slop that superficially resembles content, but is ultimately devoid of substance. Also, again we are seeing ambitions of even further concentrating wealth without real plans to have anyone share in hypothetical boons.
I call it the mirror test. It’s like looking in the mirror and recognizing it’s a mere reflection or not.
Of course, not all people who are anti-AI are necessarily folks I will agree with on other things, even assholes get it right on occasion. But it certainly has been the case that the non-assholes have been very consistently like Weird Al here…
Weird Al is a national treasure, an institution. I’d bet it’s his sort of music, parody, that AI threatens most simply because it’s riffing on songs that already exist.
On the other hand, the only reason I’d worry that a gen-AI could attempt a masterpiece like “Alternative Polka” is that Weird Al created it first.
Weird Al gets the artists’ permission. He is literally the antithesis of AI.
The story of Amish Paradise is great! Fom the wiki:
Yankovic sought permission from Coolio before making “Amish Paradise”, offering a percentage of the revenues. Yankovic was given rights to use the song by the record company (non-exclusive rights holders) and producer Doug Rasheed, but not by Coolio himself, who declined when presented with Weird Al’s offer and subsequently decried the release.[2][3][4][5]
Yankovic later stated on VH1’s Behind the Music that he had written a sincere letter of apology to Coolio, which was never returned, and that Coolio never complained when he received his royalty check from proceeds of the song. A series of photos taken at the XM Satellite Radio booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show suggests that Yankovic and Coolio had made amends.[6] In a 2014 interview, Coolio stated that the decision to refuse the parody at the time was “stupid” and he wished that someone on his management had stopped him, and then considered the final parody to be “funny”.[7]
The story behind Perform This Way is also great:
In April 2011, Yankovic reported that Lady Gaga refused him permission to release “Perform This Way”, which he had hoped to use as the lead single for his upcoming album. Yankovic had originally sent the request to parody the song to Gaga’s manager, who responded that they would need to see his lyrics to make an assessment. Yankovic was touring in Australia at the time, and hastily created the lyrics for approval.[7] Yankovic further stated that Gaga’s management insisted on reviewing a recorded version of the song, and he had cut a family vacation short to turn the recorded version around.[7] Ultimately, he was told that she refused to allow the parody.[8] Yankovic had considered the song key to his Alpocalypse album, but due to the rejection, he had begun the process to postpone its release until he could record a new song to take the place of “Perform This Way”.[9]
Following the refusal, he released his parody online on April 20, 2011, and encouraged donations to the Human Rights Campaign. Yankovic was initially fearful of parodying Gaga’s song, considering it “an important gay-rights anthem”, but had hit upon making the parody about Gaga’s fashion, and tying in the sales of the song and video to charity as an act of “good karma” due to the human rights message of the original song.[6][7]
Shortly after its upload to YouTube, word about the song spread among Yankovic’s fans, primarily along Twitter, according to Yankovic,[9] and the video had received over 2 million views.[7] The word spread to Lady Gaga and her staff, and eventually it was discovered she herself had not yet heard the song and the refusal had come from Gaga’s manager without her input.[10][11] As Lady Gaga is “a huge Weird Al fan”,[12] she subsequently gave Yankovic the green light to include the song on his upcoming album and said she loved the parody.[13][14] Lady Gaga later considered being parodied by Yankovic as a “rite of passage” for her musical career and considered the song “very empowering”.[15] Within a day of receiving permission to use the parody, Yankovic had reaffirmed the song’s inclusion on Alpocalypse and was able to set the day of release for the album; Yankovic claimed that “Twitter saved my album”.[9] Regardless of Gaga’s permission, Yankovic will still contribute sales of the song to charity.[9]
Sounds like what happened with Gary Larson and Jane Goodall
He’s a good egg alright
So why is he getting into fights with drug cartels?
Meanwhile Chamillionaire loved the parody of his “Ridin” (White & nerdy) so much he put it on his MySpace page and thanked Weird Al when he won a Grammy.
Also, Lady Gaga had no idea she was getting a Weird Al parody because her manager didn’t communicate with her and was a dick to Al.
Michael Jackson and Kurt Cobain were happy enough to let Al use the original sets for the music videos of their parodies.
Super paraphrasing because my memory sucks.
During an interview Weird Al mentioned briefly talking with Kurt Cobain and saying one of the reasons for the parody was because no one knew what Kurt was saying.
Kurt wasn’t sure about allowing the parody because he was worried it would be about food, but when Al reassured him it was about how Nirvana’s lyrics were unintelligible he laughed and allowed it.
Thank you! I loved Weird Al’s facial expression when he conveyed that story.
As I understand it, lots of musicians consider it an honor to have Weird Al approach them for a parody. He’s respectful, appreciates creativity, and up front about everything he does. IIRC Lady Gaga was thrilled when approached. And the man is seriously talented; he can reproduce songs by ear, which is incredible, and if I believe me actually wrote The Saga Begins before the movie was actually in theaters, based entirely off of trailers and stuff. Which that’s true that’s fucking incredible.
Only really Prince ever constantly denied Al a parody. Some have denied for specific songs, even Micheal Jackson denied Al at one point. Even Coolio came around in the end. He said he was too full of himself but eventually thought “Micheal didn’t care and he’s the king of pop. Who am I to be mad.” It’s only ever a sense of how serious they think the message is.
Weird Al does a lot more than just parody. He has a lot of original music as well. My wife and I saw him do an “unplugged” concert a couple years ago that was only original music and not a single parody.
The Ridiculously Self Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour? I wanted to see that show but couldn’t make it happen.
Yeah, that sounds right. I’d honestly forgotten how many original songs he’s written. I just realized there’s a comprehensive list here.
He did both his ones based on other’s songs and original songs, but didn’t do all the costumes and big production stuff on that tour. They did play at least one of those original songs in a completely different musical style among other variations from the original styles. It was just the musicians on stage in a smaller venue doing fun stuff and it was a blast.
Funny enough, despite being a fan of him as a kid in the 80s that was the first time I saw him on tour because I just didn’t really go to many concerts. Saw him on the next(?) tour where it was the large venue and it was also a blast but with tons of costume changes, sets, and all kinds of over the top showmanship. Both were fantastic!
His pastiches are even better than his parodies, he can really let loose. Albuquerque is one of the greatest songs ever written.
That sounds cool!
