“Weird Al” Yankovic’s most essential songs: 25 stinging satires that still endure

“Weird Al” Yankovic is having one of his periodic moments. Having just wrapped up his The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour—concerts where he shone a spotlight on his often under-appreciated original songs—he now sees the release Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe as the pop parodist. Fittingly, Weird uses the past as merely a suggestion, serving more as a parody of biopic conventions than a history of the musician who is by every measure the most successful musical comedian in recorded history.

When Yankovic first came on the scene in the early 1980s singing “My Bologna” and “Eat It,” he seemed destined to be a fleeting novelty. Instead, he defied all expectations and wound up with a 40-year career filled with stinging satires and clever original songs that unexpectedly still sound good—and still are funny—years after their release. Weird provides The A.V. Club the perfect opportunity to look back at that long, strange career and celebrate “Weird Al” songs that still endure.

25. “Albuquerque” (1999)

By 1999, “Weird Al” Yankovic had earned himself the opportunity to indulge whatever weird whim that crossed his mind and “Albuquerque” is one of his oddest flights of fancy: a rampaging, rambling narrative taken at a breakneck speed that doesn’t flag over the course of 11 minutes. Yankovic designed this as something of an endurance test to separate the diehards from fair-weather fans but, as luck would have it, his fans embraced it, probably because it crystalizes some of his appeal: it’s filled with jokes, both silly and clever, and the music is a bit more sophisticated than it initially seems.