Poodle Hat - A Review

[Reverend Jax]

After 4 years since Runnign With Scissors, Weird Al Yankovic has followed up his best album with a great collection of parodies and originals. Those of you only casually aquanted with Weird Al might not know about half the song of everyone of his albums have always been originals. I'll go song by song with my review. I've put the parodies in bold, as those are the ones that are usually (though not always with Weird A) the most amusing and (always) the ones that people seem to care about.

 

1. Couch Potato: A parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself." I can't confirm this, but I'm willing to bet this is the first single and video. Good lyrics, and lots of them. Alot more clever than the hundreds of stupid amatuer "My Name Is ______" parodies out there on the internet. This is why Weird Al is the Parody King.

2. Hardware Store: Standard silly Weird Al filler track. Every one of his albums has at least one.

3. Trash Day: A parody of Nelly's "Hot In Here." I'm surprise he did a pardoy do this song, seeing as it didn't get much radio play .Not bad, but not his best parody.

4. Party At The Leper Clony: Another silly and slightly morbid track. I'll probably end up skippign this track more often than not.

5. Angry White Boy Polka: The polka medley. For those not familiar with Weird Al, every album has a medley of hits, but instead of the lyrics beign changed, the lyrics stay the same while the melody get's polkafied. The chorus from about 10 songs strung together as a polka. The last two (Alternative Polka and Polka Power) have been my to favorites and this one is pretty good too. I hate to spoil the surprise, so I won't, but it's well worth the download.

6. Wanna B Ur Lovr: Simple concept, it's a seduction song using lame pick up lines for lyrics. Pretty funny, but a bit long and stretched out.

7. A Complicated Song: A parody of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated." Funny lyrics, top notch parody work. Check it out.

8. Why Does This Always Happen To Me?: Great original song about self-centerness. Good lyrics. good pacing. I noticed the piano playing sounded just like Ben Folds' piano playing, and sure enough, he played piano on that track.

9. Ode To A Superhero: A parody of Billy Joel's "Piano Man." About Spider-Man, specifically, the movie. Really clever lyrics adn if you're familiar with the original (isn't everyone) you'll love it.

10. Bob: A tribute to Bob Dylan, sung in his unique Bob Dylan style. Nicely done.

11. Ebay: A parody of The Backstreet Boy's "I Want It That Way." About complusive ebay purchasing of crap. Good stuff.

12. Genius In France: Running With Scissor's ended with an eleven and a half minute epic which is my all time favorite Weird Al song, Albuquerque. This nine minute closer isn't as good, but it's pretty good. It's clearly a tribute to Frank Zappa in it's style,a dn even features Dweezil Zappa on guitar. I hear it and thought "Frank Zappa's dead, but that guitar playing sounds so much like him." I checked the linear notes and it was his son.

 

Great stuff. If you only want to download a few tracks, get Couch Potato, Angry White Boy Polka and Ode To A Superhero. Get Why Does This Always Happen To Me? if you're a Ben Folds fan, and get Genius In France if you're a Frank Zappa fan. If you liek those, get the whole album.

[Jumbie]

Unfortunately, Eminem didn't give permission for a video. Which sucks because Al was already in production with it. He didn't think there'd be a problem with the video since he'd gotten permission for the song.

 

Oh yeah, Stupid fuck PRETEND hardass Eminem decided the song can't be a single either.

[Reverend Jax]

That explains why the album was released before a single and music video debuted.

 

Well, technically, Weird Al has the right to parody whoever he wants without their permission, but it's always been his policy to only parodies with the blessing of the original artist. He's only parodized twice without consent, the first time with "It's Still Billy Joel To Me", which was his first parody, which he recorded with a bathroom stall, and "Amish Paradise", which he honsetly though he had Coolio's blessing with, but there was a misunderstandign between his people and Coolio's people. Weird Al apologized for the misunderstanding, but Coolio has yet to accept that apology.

 

Fucking Eminem, that was the ideal song to be released as a single. Trash Day is a tad lame, A Complicated Song is a tad risque, Ode To A Superhero is based on a movie that was released over a year ago, Ebay is a Backstreet Boys parody and there are really old news. He's only released 3 original songs as singles/videos in his whole career. Eminem is really being a dick about this.