Despite him mostly being known for making parody song of popular tunes, I still say Weird Al Yankovic is a musical genius and I say that without an ounce of irony. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of work to take a tune and write your own lyrics while making it fit into the rhythm. Not only that, he has had a career that has spanned for almost five decades now! And he’s still going strong after all these years.

However, I do believe we rarely give him any props for his more original works. He’s mostly been known for songs like White and Nerdy, Fat, The Saga Begins, Amish Paradise, Perform This Way and many more. And those are just his more popular parodies! He has so many good ones I had to make an entirely different list just to feature his less popular parodies! But now it’s time to showcase Weird Al’s musical genius by featuring his actual original works. Sure, they are based on the stylings of other musical artists. But mimicking another musician’s style is a different kind of genius as well! So, let’s go look at my list of Weird Al’s best original songs!

You Don’t Love Me Anymore

Story time! Way back in high school, when the song got released, it was a minor hit on the radio over here in the Philippines. One day, we got a guest speaker in our classroom and this person was kind of a religious or conservative person preaching about “evil” media. She then went on a rant about how You Don’t Love Me Anymore will warp the minds of young kids such as myself back then into thinking how love means doing all of the “evil” things done as mentioned in the lyrics. The entire class started laughing because they knew I love Weird Al and the song. All of a sudden, the guest speaker focused on why I would love such an evil song! I tried to explain how, you know, it’s supposed to be a joke song but she wasn’t having it. Ahh, memories!

Anyway, You Don’t Love Me Anymore is a pastiche of power ballads from hair metal bands… kinda. While the video is mocking More Than Words by Extreme, it’s more in the style of soulful ballads of the late ’70s. As mentioned, More Than Words is a funny song as it’s a love song about a guy who’s just realizing his partner has been doing a lot of things to take him out.. and not in the good way! This was a really funny song because of the juxtaposition of the tone and the lyrics.

The Night Santa Went Crazy

Christmas has always been noted as “the season to be jolly.” That’s always made it ripe for making fun of it by adding a dark twist to the holiday season. You have had horror movies like Black Christmas, horror specials set during the season in shows like Black Mirror‘s White Christmas and there are even dark Christmas carols like Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer. But what’s weird is Weird Al must really love Christmas because he didn’t just make one dark Christmas song; he made two! These two being Christmas At Ground Zero and The Night Went Santa Went Crazy. I wanted to feature one of them and I was torn as both are so good. In the end, I gave the slight edge to The Night Santa Went Crazy.

While I do think Christmas At Ground Zero sounds a little more Christmas-y, The Night Santa Went Crazy is slightly more funny. Don’t get me wrong! Christmas At Ground Zero is still hilarious. But what I love about The Night Santa Went Crazy is there’s actually a story with Santa Claus just snapping and going on a murder spree, starting with his faithful reindeer and blowing up his workshop. Soon, you have the National Guard trying to stop Santa Claus! In the end, Santa Claus does end up in the clink with Mrs. Claus trying to get a movie deal and the surviving elves finding other employment. It’s dark but it’s still very, very funny.

Don’t Download This Song

I get it. Piracy is a big issue. “Stealing” songs doesn’t give support the musician. Blah, blah, blah. The problem is how some music artist seem to take things too far, like suing a preteen from file sharing songs as if she was some criminal mastermind profiting from some other person’s hard work. Thankfully, Weird Al isn’t a vindictive musician as, even as recently as when Weird: The Al Yankovic Story was just released, he actually encourages people find ways to enjoy his stuff, even through more nefarious means. And, yes, Don’t Download This Song pokes fun at how musicians and the record labels simply go overboard.

You gotta love how it’s mimicking the style of “charity songs” in the vein of We Are The World and Do They Know It’s Christmas? As if the millionaire musicians need the cash, adding a little more venom to the song. But, as good as this song is, it is pretty outdated now. I mean, hardly anyone buys CDs anymore and we all listen to songs on the Internet nowadays. But, for its time, Don’t Download This Song is a brilliant attack on the practices of the music industry. I can’t say Don’t Download This Song help restructure the music industry as we know it today and adapting to new technology, for better and for worse. But I do like to think it helped, even just a little bit.

Hardware Store

I’ve already said Weird Al is a musical genius but that just doesn’t extend to his ability to write comedy gold into popular songs but the man actually has some high-level singing ability as well as rapping skills. Most people may know this fact because of White and Nerdy as he was able to spit bars at a very fast pace. But most long-lived Weird Al fans already knew this as Hardware Song came out a while before that song came out.

It’s pretty hard to pin down what genre Hardware Song is as it isn’t actually a spoof of any particular band. As far as I know, it started out as a parody of grunge or something like that. It eventually metamorphosized into something much more unique. Not only that, Hardware Store is an impressively quick paced tune that makes it more than just difficult to sing as, if you do, you have to constantly keep chasing that rhythm as well as trying to catch your breath. Yet Weird Al seems to sing this without fumbling. It’s amazing!

Dare to be Stupid

Now, let’s say you were a kid in the ’80s and you have no idea who Weird Al Yankovic is. As far as you know, you’ve never heard a single song of his. After all, you were super busy watching cartoons such as Transformers. Then, that fateful day came when you went out and saw the original animated Transformers: The Movie. Not only did you get to see an epic movie that made you cry (because Optimus Prime actually died) but you just heard your very first Weird Al Yankovic song: Dare to be Stupid.

I have no idea who thought Dare to be Stupid would work in a Transformers movie but… it does. And it works incredibly well as it suits Wreck-Gar and the Junkions as they do indeed dare to be stupid as the song suggest. Sung in the stylings of new wave and DEVO specifically, Dare to be Stupid is a ridiculously catchy tune. The lyrics generally makes fun of “wise” idioms by telling the listener to do precisely the opposite of whatever the saying is supposed to mean. I guess the song loses some of its bite as it also includes cultural references of the era but it doesn’t dilute what a good song it is.

What is your favorite original Weird Al Yankovic song? Let me know in the comments section below!