Skip to main content

"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Headline News"

Headline News was the only new song on Al's 1994 box set Permanent Record: Al in the Box (it was also released as a single and on Greatest Hits Volume II). The song is a parody of Crash Test Dummies unlikely hit of the same year, Mm Mm Mm Mm.

That song detailed three stories about children, one who is so traumatized by an auto accident that his hair turns white, another who is embarrassed to undress for gym class because of her birthmarks, and another who goes to a Pentecostal church. It's a strangely elliptical tune with a wordless chorus, sung in an improbably low baritone. What can I say, the mid '90s were heady musical times.

Al's take on the song finds him substituting the children's stories for, as you might have guessed from the title, popular news stories of the time. First up is Michael Fey, the American youth who got caught for vandalizing cars and stealing road signs in Singapore. He was sentenced to be caned, a routine punishment there. Next is Tonya Harding, an ice skater who arranged an attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Finally there's Lorena Bobbitt, who severed her husband's penis in a fit of rage. All three of these incidents happened in either '93 or '94.

Besides just describing the stories, Al also sneaks in some commentary about our culture of glorification. He sings on the bridge, "They got paid for their sound bites / And sold their TV movie rights." I also like how he recycles a line from the original song in the final bit. In reference to John Bobbitt waking up to find his penis missing, Al sings, "He couldn't quite explain it / It'd always just been there." One might quibble about the stories only being funny in the context of their times (I'd argue that only the Harding story has lived on beyond its momentary infamy), but apparently Al has taken to updating the lyrics when he performs the song live.

The song is also notable because Al doesn't change the chorus at all, and for being the first Al song in many years to feature both the accordion AND the hand farting noises that so characterized his early parodies.

All in all, Headline News is one of Al's better parodies, both in conception and in execution.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honoring the Legacy of REO Speedwagon

I suppose I should have known the saga of REO Speedwagon couldn't end with a whimper. Before I get into the latest developments, here's a brief review of what's happened so far: In September 2024 came the announcement that the band was effectively breaking up at the end of the year. Apparently, frontman Kevin Cronin ruled that bassist Bruce Hall was no longer fit to continue touring following back surgery in summer 2024. Hall felt otherwise. Here we learned that REO had essentially become a three-way partnership between Cronin, Hall, and Doughty (who retired from touring in January 2023) following the departure of original members Alan Gratzer and Gary Richrath in 1988. Doughty sided with Hall, so Cronin was outvoted 2-1. No Bruce Hall, no REO Speedwagon. In December 2024 Cronin revealed he would continue performing REO Speedwagon songs with the two musicians who replaced Doughty and Hall, as well as Brian Hitt and Dave Amato (who replaced Gratzer and Richrath), with the on...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unlikely Musical Life of Tom Kelly

You may not know the name Tom Kelly, but I guarantee that you've sung along to songs he wrote.  Born in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1952, Tom moved to Effingham, Illinois when he was 11 years old, just in time to witness the Beatles' debut on Ed Sullivan. Bit by the rock music bug, he joined a local band called the Trifaris, singing and playing bass. His family moved back to Indiana in '66. When Tom finished high school, he decided to go to college in Illinois, but his choice was made based on extracurricular factors, not academic ones. "I started at Eastern [Illinois University] because there was a band,” he told the Effingham Daily News in 2011, “Then I transferred to Southern [Illinois University] because there was another band.”  Champaign, Illinois  Continuing his college hopping, Tom headed closer to home to attend Purdue, and there he had a group called The Gaping Huggers, comprised of former fellow Trifari JC Marshall on drums, and University of Illino...
Post a Comment
Read more

Billy Joel: Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

We started at the end, and now we finish at the beginning.  Billy Joel's first solo album has a reputation as a sort of curiousity in his catalog. For one, it was quite hard to find for a long while, as it was initually released on a small label called Family Productions and was very spottily distributed. Another bit of intrigue was that the album was initially mastered at the wrong speed, with the main effect being Billy's vocals - which were already much higher-pitched than what we'd become used to - being pitched up to near Alvin and the Chipmunks levels. In 1983, with Billy at the height of his commerical success, the album was remixed, and given some overdubs and edits. That stands today as the "offical" version, though neither the fans nor Billy himself are happy with it. So I suppose a caveat to this entire review is that Cold Spring Harbor is not the album it was intended to be. That said, I'm going to attempt to take it at face value, using the widel...
Post a Comment
Read more