The "Not Al" List

Poor "Weird Al" Yankovic. His capacity for excellent pop-song parodies is such that many people tend to assume that any parodies they hear therefore must be Weird Al. File-sharing networks, fan sites and YouTube, they're all eat-up with bogus Al numbers.

Saith the original genuine one true Al himself:

"If you do a search for my name on any one of those sites, I guarantee you that about half of the songs that come up will be songs I had absolutely nothing to do with. That particularly bothers me, because I really try to do quality work, and I also try to maintain a more-or-less family-friendly image—and some of these songs that are supposedly by me are just, well, vulgar and awful. I truly think my reputation has suffered in a lot of people's minds because of all those fake Weird Al songs floating around the Internet.

But don't fret: there's an official list of songs commonly misattributed as being by Weird Al on the web:

http://free.house.cx/~eil/etc/notal_list.html

I actually have some of these, and since Al's voice can take on a lot
of different modes, I honestly believed that "Asshole Son" (a parody of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun") really was some sort of rare outtake. I also labored for years under the false data that "Dirty Deeds Done With Sheep" (an AC-DC parody) was legitimately Mr. Yankovic's work.

I also have "Pet Names for Genitalia" (a litany of penile nomenclature recited to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire") and "Cat in the Kettle" (a politically incorrect remake of Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle" set in a disreputable Chinese Restaurant), but I could immediately tell upon downloading that they were clearly someone else. They're pretty good anyway, though. (But for my internet-hatin' money, "We Didn't Start the Flame War" is an even better Billy Joel spoof.)

Turns out a number of these "Not Al" songs are actually done by a chap named Bob Rivers, the guy responsible for the masterpiece "Cheney's Got A Gun" (to the tune of Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun") and the Beatles homage "I Can't Afford to Drive My Car".

- - JSH