Put away the irony.  Clear a drawer for the ’80s kitschy nostalgia.  “Weird” Al Yankovic must be taken seriously.  Sure, he might have spent his life . . . penning popular-song parodies, but he is by no means a novelty. Consider the facts:  His career has outlasted almost every artist he’s ever parodied, he’s had his own movie and television show– both of which were criminally underrated– and he’s earned six platinum albums and three Grammy Awards.  And, soon Yankovic will add to the list a children’s book published by HarperCollins, a new album, and an appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties at the request of God Speed You Black Emperor. In the words of his character, George Newman, in Yankovic’s brilliantly bizarre movie, UHF:  “This means something.  This is important.”

I feel like I’ve been waiting twenty-eight years for this interview.

Me too.

Many entertainers talk about how comedy and music are intimately connected, and it seems like few people have put that connection to as much use as you have. What are your feelings on the two and how they are related?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* It’s a delicate relationship. It’s kind of a balancing act, because I think a lot of musicians would like to be thought of as having a sense of humor, but they don’t want to be considered a joke. They’re careful to walk that tightrope between funny and quirky, because a lot of people in the music industry would not like to be considered a novelty act. I think, by definition, I am a novelty act. And even I don’t like that title—it is kind of a reductive, dismissive title for comedy and music. Even though comedy in music is a novelty, it carries a bad connotation. But, I embrace the fact that I mix comedy and music. I think artists are sometimes a little scared of that relationship between comedy and music, and they run screaming from it because they frankly don’t want to be considered a joke.

It’s funny you talk about being a novelty act because your career has outlived almost everyone you’ve ever parodied.

*CLICK TO LISTEN*That, my friend, is the irony of my life. Nobody wanted to sign me way back when because they thought, “Oh, parodies, novelty music, yeah, you’re going to have one hit at best and then we’ll never hear from you again.” Meanwhile, thirty years down the road I’m still kickin’.

One part of your career that often gets overlooked is the incredible accuracy of your parodies. The song I always think of is “Beverly Hillbillies,” where that guitar tone is just dead on. [“Beverly Hillbillies” is a parody of Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”]

Well, interesting that you should pick that song. If you didn’t know it already, that guitar playing is by Mark Knopfler himself. He decided he wanted to play guitar on that parody, so we let him. So, obviously that’s going to sound pretty authentic.

But not just that one—you seem to have the ability to recreate the tones of the songs you parody to an incredibly exact degree.

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Thanks.  I have to give full credit to my band and the amazing people that I work with. I’ve been with the same guys since the early-’80s, and they know the drill. They know that we’re trying to just really nail those sounds and those parts. They take things apart. You know, my guitar player will be there with headphones doing the third-channel elimination, trying to focus on certain frequencies so he can just pick out those subtlest nuances in a guitar line. Some of these songs are pretty dense. There’s a lot of stuff on them, but they’re able to deconstruct it, and pull it apart and recreate it so well, it sometimes blows my mind. I feel very fortunate that I’m able to work with what I consider to be the best band in the world.

Another thing that gets overlooked is the fact that you’ve had to master every style and trend in popular music for the last thirty years. Did you have a favorite period during that time, or was there a particular style that you especially liked to parody?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* I like the fact that I can be that eclectic and jump from one style to the next on a dime. That’s kind of what gets me off, the fact that we can go from gangsta rap to Zydeco music to alternative grunge—it’s all on the same album. That’s what I really enjoy. My personal tastes probably run more toward indie and alternative rock, things like that, but I really enjoy it all. Anything that I play live or that I put on the album, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not a song that I dislike. I wouldn’t pick a song that I couldn’t stand playing, or recording or spending time around. That would just be tortuous to me.

Most musicians when they’re just starting out have to deal with some embarrassment, bad shows, taking their lumps, the whole thing. I would imagine with a parody musician, there would be some especially hard knocks. Do you remember any particularly bad shows?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Well, the one that really stands out is my most traumatic experience—it was covered pretty well on Behind the Music—but it was my 1982 concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium when I opened for Missing Persons. And this is before I had a record deal—I had a few minor hits on the Dr. Demento show, but this is before “Eat It,” before I had an album out, I was sort of this guy that had a few songs on the Demento show. I thought, “Missing Persons, that’ll be fun. I like their music, and I’m sure their audience will be cool and would be receptive of a guy that does funny songs on his accordion.” I was very wrong. [laughs] We got pelted for forty-five minutes. I’m not exaggerating. I mean pelted. They weren’t even applauding at the end of the songs. It was just nothing but boos and, “Get off the stage,” and people throwing things for forty-five minutes, and we stayed on the entire time because we were getting paid to stay on stage for forty-five minutes.

Really? You played the whole thing?

Yeah, and the funny things is, now, over the last twenty-eight years, people have been coming up to me and saying, “Oh, I was at that Missing Persons show.” And I say, “Oh, really? What did you throw?”

I think my favorite song of yours is “Dare to Be Stupid,” because it is an original song, and one of your best. How did you write that one?

I mean, obviously it’s meant to sound like Devo, and I’m a huge fan of the group, so I probably listened to Devo albums for a couple of days and tried to pinpoint all of their little artistic idiosyncrasies and everything about their style that made them who they are. I tried to incorporate those little quirks into my own original song and kind of put it all together. “Dare to be stupid” was a line in my notebook, among a lot of other song ideas that I had, and I looked at that and thought, “Well, that sounds like some kind of Devo-esque anthem.” Off that, I just riffed on a bunch of stupid one-liner ideas and put the song together.

You said on your blog that you plan on recording three more songs for the new album after this current tour ends, and then you’ll release it. Do you know what those songs are going to be?

Well, I’ve got ideas for two of them. Whether or not I get clearance is one thing, but it’s very nebulous right now. I can’t really speak to it. I’m certainly putting effort into making sure the album comes out as soon as possible. I have some ideas floating out there but nothing definitive yet.

You also wrote a movie for Cartoon Network that was just about to go into production, but then they had some sort of shakeup and no longer do movies, right?

Right, it went into “turnaround,” as they say.

Can you say what the movie is about or what will happen to it?

Not really. We want to keep it kind of quiet until it actually gets close to being made. I kind of regret even talking about it as much as I did before it went to production because, you know, it didn’t go into production. But, I was excited about it, and I wanted to share it with my fans. That’s the thing about Twitter – I’m drawn to it, and you feel a compulsion to share things with your fans that maybe you shouldn’t. I find myself guilty of that.

Would you ever do a TV show again?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Yeah, I’d consider it. I’m not actually pitching a “Weird” Al TV show right now, but I wouldn’t rule it out, and if somebody came to me with the right idea, I wouldn’t rule that out either. But, it’s not like I’m dying to be on a TV show. In the last ten years, I’ve been pitched a dozen different TV shows from major players that would’ve been able to get it on the air, but all those ideas were, frankly, pretty horrible – they were all reality shows where I would be, you know, helping a team to write song parodies, and there would be another team and it would be very Survivor-like, and it was just wrong and stupid on so many levels, I can’t even tell you. But, it would’ve gotten on the air if I said yes.

What about your children’s book, When I Grow Up?

That is happening, and that is something that I’m very happy with. That will be out, I believe, on March 1 of next year with Harper Collins. I don’t have any other ideas at the moment, but I had a great experience, and I look forward to having a long relationship with Harper Collins and do some more children’s books for them. That was just something that seemed like a nice little detour from what I normally do, and I like to try to stretch myself creatively and sometimes do things that people don’t expect me to do.

Did you generate that idea?

I did. I pitched them on several ideas, and that was the one that they liked, and I went ahead and did it.

Is it autobiographical at all? The title would lead one to think so.

Well, only in the most overreaching broad sense, I suppose. It is sort of what the name would imply – it’s about a kid with an overactive imagination just kind of riffing on the cool and amazing things he could possibly be when he grows up.

God Speed You Black Emperor just asked you to open for them. How did that come about?

Sort of out of the blue. I put it out there for many years that I’ve always wanted to play the UK and play in Europe. We just haven’t been able to make the math work out, because it’s a very expensive proposition for us to take the show overseas. There are a lot of costumes, there are computer servers – it’s just a lot of stuff to fly. Between that show and the show the next night in London, we would be making enough that we would at least break even. So, at that point, I said, “Okay, let’s do this.” We have now a confirmed European tour, even though the tour, as of right now, is only two days. Hopefully we’ll add some more, but I can’t guarantee anything.

Do you have a following in Europe? Do you know how your albums sell there?

I can’t speak to sales. I know that I have a lot of fans from the UK because a lot of them follow me on Twitter, and some of them have gone so far as to take the plane flight to the U.S. to see some of my U.S. shows. I know there’s a big fan base there, I think through my presence on the Internet perhaps more than actual record sales. I don’t know what it’s like these days, but the last time I was in the UK, it was hard to find my stuff actually in physical record stores. But, through portals like YouTube and various other places, people have come to know my work.

GSYBE also asked you to play their installation of All Tomorrow’s Parties. ATP is a great festival, but it’s also kind of an elitist hipster festival, and if you asked me what is the diametric opposite of hipster elitism, I would say it is you.

[laughs] Well, I think having me at that festival is very ironic, and irony is very hipster-ish, so I think it all fits in.

Good point. Will you do anything special there, or do you do the same show everywhere?

Pretty much a normal show, although I may have to talk to some of my British friends and see if there are any American pop culture references that just wouldn’t fly over there. There might be references or songs that they just wouldn’t be able to relate to, so I may have to tamper with it a little bit, but overall, I think it’s going to be basically the same show.

The last thing I want to ask you is this: If you were traveling through outer space, and you were going real fast, like the speed of light, and you started screaming, would your brain blow up? [Note: To grasp the subtlety of the question, it is necessary to know that Michael Richards’ character, Stanley Spadowski, says this to George Newman in UHF]

I would imagine so.

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Essential album: Dare to Be Stupid | Essential movie: UHF

Video [the best of UHF]: