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"Weird Al" Yankovic: "Now You Know" (2023) and "Polkamania" (2024)

Following in the footsteps of  the Beatles and Billy Joel comes "Weird Al" Yankovic. While nothing can quite top the 30-plus year silences of the other two, consider that "Weird Al" has only given us three new songs in 10 years: 2018's "The Hamilton Polka," last year's "Now You Know" and the brand new "Polkamania." And since I've written about all of his previous music, I'm obliged to keep it going. 

I don't have a lot to say about "Now You Know," except that I really enjoyed Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and the way it skewered so many conventions of rock biopics. The song - a Dire Straits soundalike that turns into a soul rave-up - plays over the credits, and while it works well there, it's not something that stands particularly well on its own.


Now let's talk about polkas. Going all the way back to his second album (1984's In 3-D), "Weird Al" has been doing polka medleys of popular songs. As I wrote in my review of Mandatory Fun, "If you listen to all of Al's medleys from 'Polkas On 45' (1984) to present, you can get a pretty comprehensive 30 year overview of music history."   

On that first outing, "Polkas on 45" Al combined then-new songs (Talking Heads "Burning Down the House") with older ones (The Who's "My Generation"), but on future outings he tended to focus only on then current hits (exceptions include "The Hot Rocks Polka," "Bohemian Polka," and the aforementioned "The Hamilton Polka" which focused on one artist / song / musical).


"Polkamania" follows the current hits formula, but since it's been 10 years since Mandatory Fun's "NOW That's What I Call Polka" the date range is a bit larger than usual. Also, Al revealed that he limited himself to only songs that hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and songs that felt iconically representative of their respective artists. 

Anyway, here's the line-up:
Billie Eilish - "Bad Guy" (2019)
Adele - "Hello" (2015)
Miley Cyrus - "Flowers" (2023)
Encanto cast - "We Don't Talk About Bruno" (2021)
Olivia Rodrigo - "Vampire" (2023)
Lil Nas X - "Old Town Road" (2019)
Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee - "Despacito" (2019)
Ed Sheeran - "Shape of You" (2017)
Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars - "Uptown Funk" (2014)
Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion - "WAP" (2020)
Ariana Grande - "Thank You, Next" (2018)
Taylor Swift - "Shake It Off" (2014)

It's very enjoyable, as the polka medleys always are, but if the song has a fault, it's that the parameters didn't allow for some of the left field inclusions that made previous iterations so enjoyable and representative. That said, I wish Al had gone all the way and added songs released in 2016 and 2022 so that every year of the past ten was represented at least once. For 2016 I'd suggest "Closer" by the Chainsmokers. For 2022, how about "Heat Waves" by Glass Animals, or "As It Was" by Harry Styles?

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