I don't think this person "gets" Weird Al's typical album. At the risk of sounding like someone who is a bit too familiar with Al's work, generally speaking the

I don't think this person "gets" Weird Al's typical album. At the risk of sounding like someone who is a bit too familiar with Al's work, generally speaking the songs Al does fall into five groups: - Songs about the song they are parodying (like "Smells Like Nirvana") - Songs that are pitch-perfect parodies of a song but of a completely different subject. (Most of his popular songs, "Eat It" to "Like a Surgeon", etc, etc) - Songs of their own subject but whose music are parodies (or inspirations of) an artist or genre. ("Mission Statement" on this album seems to be inspired by the hippie acoustic hits of the 60s and 70s, "Germs" was basically a Nine Inch Nails song but none in specific.) - One-off songs that usually have a gimmick or something but not be overtly attempting to musically parody a specific song, artist, or genre. ("Albuquerque" was a really, really long song, "Lame Claim To Fame" is a running joke about people who point out how they have some N'th degree tangential relationship to someone famous.) - Each album has a (always incredible) polka track where a dozen or so songs are rapidly parodied as polkas. It's always the one that gets stuck in my head. The article seems to think the best of Al's work is when he parodies a song into one with commentary on the song itself (or the artist, etc.) But in reality this is a very small sliver of the type of thing Al does, I can probably count on one hand the number of tracks that are akin to "Smells Like Nirvana" where the song is about the band and the song he's parodying. Of course, intellectual wankery is generally drawn to this type of "meta-commentary" just because it's seemingly more complex than a straight up parody, but if you have listened to Al over the years you'll realize the guy is ridiculously talented. Though most of his songs are silly, the range of themes, styles, subject matter, and even his personal vocal range are astounding, nevermind the fact that his band has a pretty brutal touring schedule and have been playing some of these songs for like 20-25 years now. I mean, basically the guy likely takes the chorus of the song he is parodying, comes up with some options that work lyrically, and then has to build a song around that. One track on this album is called "Foil," probably at first because the word works well for the chorus. How many people could then honestly write an entire well-written, entertaining song about foil? Most artists seem to be trapped in their own style, but honestly despite the surface-level silliness aspect to his music he manages to pull off tunes from so many parts of the musical spectrum I'd probably argue he's the most "Renaissance Man" musician out there.