Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / _Weird Al_ Yankovic - _Bigger and Weirder 2026_ Tour _ The Daily Show

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_Weird Al_ Yankovic - _Bigger and Weirder 2026_ Tour _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Widow Yankovic!
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, we should just give you a standing
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: ovation for the whole interview, because you're a legend.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show. It's so great to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: meet you.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Good to see you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: You're one of the guys who, man, people, you know,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: there's like five generations of people who love you.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I think they all came here for you tonight. Thanks
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: for coming on. Yeah, I do. Thank you, man. Yeah.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, and you're one of the few
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: guys where I can ask this, because you've been around
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: for so long now.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So long.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: So long.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: You have seen, like, entirely different, like, multiverses from the
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: 80s to 2026. It's like every decade was almost like
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: a different timeline.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, I actually started in the 70s, because
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: my first single, My Bologna, came out December 79. Oh, good.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: You were actually, yeah. So six decades, actually.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Six decades, yeah. What format was that on?
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Well, originally, I was recording in the bathroom. So, you know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: my recording techniques.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Got a little better over the years.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, so, I mean, can you help us make
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: sense of... Can you give us any perspective on this?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Like, for 80s to 90s.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: to the 2000s to now, like?
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Well, for me, you know, I base a lot of
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: my work on what pop culture is. And I talk
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: about this a lot in interviews, but back in the
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: 80s and 90s, there was more of a monoculture. Because,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: you know, if something was in hot rotation and MTV,
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: everybody knew that song. Top 40 radio was more of
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: a thing where people were really focused on what the
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: hits were. And now everybody's into their own, like, sub-genres
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: and their niche genres. you know, musical taste, which is great.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: It's nice to have music on demand, but it's a
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: little bit harder to define who the superstars are, what
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: the huge hits are.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: So, even you have found it difficult to parody what
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the hell's happening in 2026?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's a little... It's a little bit difficult, yeah. So,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: how do you approach it? I mean, have you tried to.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Have you looked at the top 100 and tried to
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: figure it out, or have you just given up on this, like...
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I'm just.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Well, you'll notice I haven't put out an album for
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: 12 years. That's one clue.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: So that's the mark of when society started disintegrating, was when.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I give up!
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: When Weird Al gave up on it was... No, I'm
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: actually more focused on other things, because I had a
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: record deal that I signed in 1982, which last... I
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: fulfilled it in just 32 short years. And after I
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: finished the record deal, I was like, okay, I'm just
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: gonna take a break, and I'll just do other things
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: for a while.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, so you're indie. You became an indie artist. I
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: kind of am, yeah. And, I mean, people don't know the... Maybe,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: probably they do know the full extent of what you do.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, you do parodies, you do pastiches, which is
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: where you... you kind of make fun of a genre
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: of music. Right.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So it's not their original songs. I get full songwriting credit,
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: but they're inspired by other artists. They're sound-alike style parodies,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: as it were. So I take an artist that I
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: really like that has a very unique style, like Frank
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: Zappa or Brian Wilson or.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Beach Boys or Taylor Swift, even.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that kind of thing, and just study their whole
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: oeuvre and figure out, like, kind of what makes them
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: tick and then write a song in their style but
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: make it a little bit weird.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I know, but that's insane, that you kind of.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Not just the parody stuff, which is already hilarious and
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: musical genius, but you figure out a way to, like,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy the.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Is that a verb? I mean, I guess... Yeah.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: It's almost like you listen to someone for... If you
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: listen to a musician's music for, like, five minutes, I
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: feel like you could do them.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I probably could, but I'm kind of
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: anal in that way that I really like to study
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: for a long period of time. Like, when I did
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Frank Zappa, I listened to his catalog literally for a
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: month before I started even writing something because I wanted
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: it to, like, infiltrate my brain.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, I don't know.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you which one is harder
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: or more fun, but it sounds like the pastiche is
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: way harder.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: It's way harder. It involves a lot more work. The parodies.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Back when I first started out, I would dash off
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: a parody in 20 minutes because I figured, who cares?
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Nobody's going to even listen to this thing. Now that, oh,
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: people are listening, so I better.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Spend some time. All right, and the other aspect of
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: what you do is polka music. Yes, yeah.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Which is where you play the polka, you do a polka,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: but you insert people's music into it.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I learned a long time, well, first of all, the
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: accordion is my main act, so when you grow up
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: taking accordion lessons, they don't teach you Led Zeppelin, they
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: teach you, like, polka and, you know, some classical pieces.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: And I learned a long time ago that most rock
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: songs just sound a little better done polka style. So
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: I base a lot of my career around that.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And have you found any type of music that you
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: are unable to translate into accordion polka?
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: Gregorian chants are hard. I'm working on that, and wailing songs,
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: those two things.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: But just those two?
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And I mean, even the accordion is an interesting start
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: to this whole thing, was your parents, I guess what
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I read was that you were given the choice between
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: an accordion or guitar.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: They gave my parents that choice. They picked accordion.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And your parents picked accordion?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, my mother wanted me to be really popular in
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: high school. That was sound logic. Right.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But it was true, right?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: They did pick accordion because they thought, absolutely, that's not
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: even a joke.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: They thought the accordion was cooler. They did.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, they're big Lawrence Welk fans. And, you know, actually,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: you know, the accordion was extremely popular, like, in the 50s. Like,
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Dick Contino was, like, a sex god, and he played
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: the accordion. And you look at his album covers, and unironically,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: here's a guy with an accordion, and there's women draped
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: on his arms and legs, like, oh, I love your accordion.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm just trying to bring sexy back to the accordion.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And so he'd be like, shirtless of accordion. And that
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was a thing. And the 50s was weird.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: And why do you think that didn't... Why did that
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: die out? Why did we lose the appreciation?
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I hate to diss Lawrence Welk, but
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: it was 100% him.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Right, but that's, I think, from what I've read, that's
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: kind of how you started on this, because you were
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: given this accordion, which is a very specific sound. Yeah.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And I guess you were trying to play the music
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: of the time with it. Right. And that's how you
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: kind of, that's how, where all this started.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't get anybody to join my rock band
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: when I was a kid. And, you know, I just
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: played along with the songs on the radio. I learned
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: how to play things by ear, and I just, you know,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: it just kind of gravitated in that direction. Yeah.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just skipped over this whole thing. You're a
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: freaking musical genius, man. You're a self-taught musician who freaking
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: plays by ear.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy. And speaking of.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Musical genius, I mean, your live shows are spectacular. Oh,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: You know, and I'm not, like, when you go there,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: the musicians on stage are amazing. Where are you finding
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: these guys?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I've had the core band since the
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: early 80s. I met my drummer on September 14, 1980.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: I met him on the Dr. D'Amato radio show because
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: he was the guy that happened to be in the.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: D'Amato, yeah? Yeah.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I can't even remember the date I met my mom.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: How did you remember that?
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: That's her anniversary, so I have to remember that. But
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: he happened to be in the studio, and I got
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: this new song, another one, Rides the Bus. Does anybody
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: want to bang on my accordion.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Case for percussion?
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: He said, I'm a drummer. Oh, you got the job.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: And 46 years later, he still got the job.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So this band's been going around.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: And, you know, have you found it difficult to kind of.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Make sense of, you know, this 2026. I feel like you, again,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I hate to keep talking about how long you've been around.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: But the 80s was a long time.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: I'm super old.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It's so old.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Like, you are before the internet.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Like, way before the internet. You predate the internet by
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: 20 years. That is.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: The longevity is truly insane.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I mean... It's kind of crazy because when I first
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: started out, nobody wanted to sign me to a record
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: deal because they thought, oh, novelty music, right? It's like
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: the domain of one-hit wonders. And we want, you know,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: artists that are going to have a career and going
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: to stick around for a while. So I'm sort of
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: a novelty dinosaur. I've bucked the odds.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: You've bucked everybody. There's no one that's been around for
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: this long. No one has been around this long. And
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I guess it's just like, do you feel like... You know,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: when you started in the 80s, you were kind of
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: weird Al Yankovic.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I still am.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I feel like the world has gotten way
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: weirder than you now.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Well, that's true. You're almost like normal Al now.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: I've been told I'm a.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I've been told I'm a... You're like.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: You're like the last remaining.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: It's kind of ironic now.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: The least weird guy in Hollywood now.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: You've hung out long enough. And the other thing is
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: that you've had to kind of deal with over the last,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I guess, 35 years maybe is the internet and this
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: remixing culture.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: And it's kind of a given on the internet.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: That people, we have copyright laws, but nobody really respects
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: it or even knows what it is. But you were
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: always a guy who I feel was like a model,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: ethical guy. a collaborator, because you would seek out the
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: artist you were parodying and ask for permission.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Internet is sort of like the Wild West,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of people just doing things and, you know,
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: without permission and hope they don't get caught kind of thing.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. But, you know.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you were.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: You kind of proved that you could do it by
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: asking for permission.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and legally, I've always said it's a gray area.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: I could get away with doing a lot of these things,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: but I just want to respect the artists and the
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: songwriters and make sure they're in on the joke. And,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: I don't want to step on anybody's toes that way. Why?
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be involved in a drive-by.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but do you feel that that's a lesson the
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: world needs to know?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Or are you like, let the kids do what they want?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It was the good old days of the 80s, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: we asked for permission before we made fun of your song.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: People are going to do what they're going to do.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: I think when sampling became more of a thing, like
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: rappers getting permission for samples, then people kind of understood
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: more like what I did. Because when I started in
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: the 80s and I was asking to borrow people's music,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: That was a whole alien concept. Like, you're gonna do what?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: What?
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: But now it's sort of like, oh, it's sort of
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: like you're sampling the whole song. I get it now, yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Well, not only that, I think now people want you
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to parody them because it's almost not.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: It's harder to get.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Like, a Weird Al parody song is harder to get
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: than a Grammy right now.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It's like a true mark of... It's a real credit.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: People want the Yankovic bump.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE No, they do.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: And you're... Maybe you're too nice a guy to talk
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: about this, but has anyone actually come up to you
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: and been like, hey, can you.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe, like, someone called Dua Lipa, maybe? Like.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: I don't want to mention any names, but every now
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: and then, I don't know if they're... There might just be...
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Just being nice, but, like, at parties, they'll say, oh,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: when are you going to do one of my songs?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: No, they'll be nice.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: They want it. Okay. They want it. It's a problem.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And have you... I mean, without getting into specifics, have you...
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Have you.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Has someone come up to you and you've... been like,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I just can't do it. Have you declined them to
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: their face?
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I always say, interesting?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Let me think about that. So now we know that's
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: him saying no. He's on the record with that. Yeah,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and it's a real bummer.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: And I feel like looking through your music, it's like
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: this cultural archive of what was relevant at the time. Like,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: when you look at your albums, it's almost this, like.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: It's a pop culture capsule. So if you haven't listened
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: to pop music in three years, like, oh, just get
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: the Weird Al record and you'll be all up to date.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you'll be all up to date. I mean,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: that's cool. That's really cool that you're the arbiter of it.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But you're also, like, a nice arbiter. You're not... I mean,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I guess what I'm getting at is.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Like, a lot of people now are very... A lot
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: of old-timers now. I'm looking at all these people in
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: the crowd. They... Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: These old-timers, I.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Feel like they're very down on what's current, you know?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: We always look at the past with these rose-sintered glasses,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: and I don't know if you can kind of speak
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: to that, whether you agree that everything now is terrible or... No.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Certainly not.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I think the kids would appreciate it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I understand that. I think you kind of go for
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: the comfort food. Like, you know, when I just want
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: to listen to music, now I kind of listen to
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: the kind of music I listened to in college, you know?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Because for the longest time, my job description involved me, like,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: studying the Billboard charts and knowing exactly what was happening
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: in music, which I enjoyed doing. But now that that's
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: less of what I'm about, I find myself gravitating towards, like,
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: the stuff I listened to in high school, you know?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: And I guess you're saying that there's nothing wrong with that.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Let's know what you want to listen to. I mean,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: you know, it's... Music today is as good as it
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: ever was, but.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You heard it. You heard it here.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Without giving a stem of approval. Yeah. Yeah, and I
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: guess I also feel like because you're such a musical
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: genius and you were the first guy to... I popularized
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: remixing things and you remix with such love and you
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: make things better and you ask for permission I was
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: hoping that maybe you could just you know become the
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: head of AI because.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Well, people assume when they see my name, they go,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: who's weird AI?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: It's already in the name. Yeah, might as well.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you could take over AI and just
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: teach these computers how to.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Hard pass.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I'll pass on that one. Let me think about that.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Wait out. You're the best, man.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Thanks for making everyone happy for so many decades.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Your music is amazing, and you're very cool, and I
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: hope you keep making it. So thank you so much
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: for making this happen. The Tickets and Tour Dates.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: The Bigger and Weirder 2026 Tour.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Go to weirdal.com. It's Weird Al Yankovic!