‘Eat It’: The parody that Weird Al Yankovic is most proud of
As the king of the parody scene, known for taking artists down a peg or two and roundly just taking the piss, it’s hard to tell which of his achievements Weird Al Yankovic is most proud of.
More than a mainstream pop or rock act, who can easily reel out rather meaningless songs one after the other on the production line, without ever putting much thought into it, Yankovic has a different kettle of fish to deal with. The tune may have been written for him, but each lyric has to be meticulously planned, every joke has to be a zinger, and every video must have the audience rolling in the aisles if he has any chance of making them land.
In that sense, a comic musician is more under pressure than any other artist to truly hit the nail on the head – and first time, too, because you get far less of a window than in other vocations to make things work. All of this is to say that for Yankovic, the proudest moment of his career was also one rooted in relief, because it was the time in which he finally knew for certain that everything was set to fall into place.
In a previous interview with Vulture, when asked about the song which legitimised his career, Yankovic had one simple answer. “‘Eat It’, which was on my second album,” he said definitively. “My first album did well enough to merit the record company rolling the dice on album No. 2. It had a couple of very minor hits, such as ‘Ricky’ which was ostensibly the first comedy video ever played on MTV, and ‘I Love Rocky Road’. They appealed to, I suppose, hard-core comedy nerds and didn’t reach a much wider audience than that. But when you add Michael Jackson to the equation, all of a sudden it becomes a much bigger fan base.”
You can say that again. Parodying the King of Pop was always bound to be a risky move, providing Yankovic not only a much bigger audience but also the heat on his back in twofold ways: angering Jackson and his fans, and having the pressure to continue coming up with something great afterwards. Yet nevertheless, the precedent was set, and a career was made. There was no turning back now, and it was understandably a standout proud moment to dine out on.
It goes without saying that there have been dozens of other proud moments that he has enjoyed since, from the divine to the downright bizarre, but all of those roads ultimately lead back to the North Star of ‘Eat It’, without which none of it would have ever managed to happen. Of course, moves like that are loaded with trepidation at the time in which they happen, but looking back in retrospect? There’s nothing but golden memories.
Yankovic is such a staple of the comedy canon that it simply feels like he’s always been there. In some ways, he kind of has been, treading the boards for over four decades at this point. But comedians are almost like magicians in the illusion they have to paint, making everything look as fresh as the day it came out. The man has some tricks up his sleeve in this respect, because in a lot of ways, Jackson did much of the heavy lifting for him.
