Weird Al Yankovic Turns 50: Weird Al's Top 10 Songs

As "Weird Al" Yankovic hits the half-century mark on October 23, 2009, this list details the 10 best "Weird Al" songs of all time. These songs aren't necessarily Weird Al's biggest hits, like his Michael Jackson parodies "Eat It" and "Fat," but these are his best songs up to and including the soundtrack to UHF.

The bulk of Weird Al's songs are either direct parodies of popular songs or style parodies of a particular group's sound.

10. I Lost on Jeopardy (YouTube Video)
Parody of: "Jeopardy" by The Greg Kihn Band
Weird Al took Greg Kihn's ditty about a doomed relationship and made it a story about a doomed visit to the popular game show Jeopardy! Losing badly to a plumber and an architect, Weird Al is mocked by Don Pardo at the song's end.

9. Good Old Days (YouTube Video)
Style parody of: James Taylor
"Good Old Days" starts off innocently, sounding like a nice nostalgia tune that Norman Rockwell would approve of, but it soon take a U-turn to the dark side, with lyrics like "Torturing rats with a hacksaw/And pulling the wings off of flies." It all goes downhill from there.

8. Yoda (YouTube Video)
Parody of: "Lola" by The Kinks
It took Al nearly five years to clear the rights to the song, as he had to get clearance from both the Kinks and George Lucas, but his "Lola" is from the perspective of Luke Skywalker as he meets Yoda on the planet Dagobah storyline of The Empire Strikes Back.

7. The Brady Bunch (YouTube Video)
Parody of: "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats
Al's parody of the '80s one-hit wonder is particularly impressive because he incorporates the lyrics of Ivan Doroschuk's theme to The Brady Bunch into the melody of "The Safety Dance."

6. Buy Me A Condo (YouTube Video)
Style parody of: Bob Marley
Weird Al's "Buy Me a Condo" is a reggae-style tune about a Rastafarian who moves to America and immediately becomes a 1980s yuppie. "Gonna sell my Bob Marley records/gonna get me some Jackson Browne" Al's Jamaican sings.

5. One More Minute (YouTube Video)
Style parody of: doo wop music
Weird Al's doo wop song about writing an ex-girlfriend out of his life is on the dark side. The song is a laundry list of things he would rather do than "spend one more minute with you," among them the claim that "I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue."

4. Another One Rides The Bus (YouTube Video)
Parody of: "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen
One of Al's first mainstream hits, "Another One Rides The Bus" is about a man riding a crowded bus that just keeps on picking up more passengers, making the bus stuffy and claustrophobic. We've all been there.

3. Dare To Be Stupid (YouTube Video)
Style parody of: Devo
"Dare To Be Stupid" has been Weird Al's mantra throughout his long career. The song was such a successful Devo style parody that it made Devo's very own Mark Mothersbaugh jealous.

2. Happy Birthday (YouTube Video)
Style parody of: Tonio K
Another innocent song that takes a dramatic U-turn, it starts out as a Happy Birthday song and degrades into 1980s fears of pollution, nuclear warfare, and worldwide annihilation. The chorus of "Happy birthday to you" is a funny juxtaposition with lyrics like "When they drop the big one, we all get fried."

1. The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (YouTube Video)
Parody of: "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" by Harry Chapin
Just under 7 minutes long, this is Weird Al's epic song, about a man who takes his family on a cross-country journey to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, referencing other similar novelty tourist attractions in the United States. The song isn't all that zany, but its lyrics are clever, and its probably the finest example of Weird Al's songwriting ability.