There’s multiple parts to Weird Al’s Licensing scenario, because oddly - The law separates out copyright on what we broadly know as “songs” into two parts. The

There’s multiple parts to Weird Al’s Licensing scenario, because oddly - The law separates out copyright on what we broadly know as “songs” into two parts. The lyrics are legally distinct from the melody that they are sung to[1]. Weird Al licenses his parodies, both the lyrics and the music, but additionally asks for permission from the singer/songwriter out of respect for the artists. Often the copyrights on both lyrics and melody are assigned to someone (or usually, corporate entity) other than what we think of as the “Artist”. He possibly (depending on the song in question) has a legal case for some of his lyrical parodies (Not so much “The Saga Begins”, but “Addicted to Spuds” is certainly a parody of love songs in general and “Addicted To Love” in that blast radius), but he plays the original melody, and that requires him to license his work. Apropos but distinct: Figuring out the copyrighting entity, or if there’s a copyright at all, is itself a challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyright_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyrigh... [1]https://www.copyrightuser.org/create/creative-process/going-for-a-song-track-1/ https://www.copyrightuser.org/create/creative-process/going-...