‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Has Returned to Save Us From Lame Song Parodies

While YouTube has made pop song parodies as common as cat videos, this generation has forgotten that there is an art to a great song parody. It’s not enough to make a hit song about something else. You have to have a certain cadence—a certainly feel for flow and comedy. Only about one person in a generation is really capable of a great parody, and the one person of his generation is Weird Al, who remains the unchallenged master of the form. He’s returning with a new (and supposedly final) album, Mandatory Fun, and is releasing a series of music videos to promote it. They’ve all been terrific, but his take on Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” showcases just what makes him such a unique talent, transforming Thicke’s ode to misogyny into a critique of tech writing, and replacing the rude jokes with genuinely sound advice. It’s funny, it’s important and it’s much harder than it comes across …