ABSTRACT
Though Weirdrow Album Yankeeverse would be a believable birth name, Albert Matthew “Weird Al” Yankovic earned his moniker. One of pop music’s most accomplished accordionists, Al has earned four Grammys, amassed four gold and six platinum records, and may have sung more songs about food than all artists of the rock era combined. This chapter is an attempt to understand the minds and muses of Yankovic. To do so, the author attempts a parody cover of Will Brooker’s Being Bowie. For one year, Brooker dressed, ate, sang, and generally lived as much like Bowie as he could. Whereas it took Brooker a year to cycle through Bowie’s protean manifestations, “Weird Al” has been singular in his aesthetic and technique his entire four-decade-plus career, so it took this author only a few days of generally living like “Weird Al” to achieve the desired immersive effect.
