Al Yankovic Quotes

Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

Guitar solos, to me, should be a really articulate way to make fun of guitar solos.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.

There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.

Parody is homage gone sour.

I think impersonation is a great art. It's something that I enjoy doing, in a frivolous and lighthearted way. But I don't flatter myself to think I'm an impersonator.

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.

The movie Spinal Tap rocked my world. It's for rock what The Sound of Music was for hills. They really nailed how dumb rock can be.

We all know how funny Morrissey is. Actually, you know what? I say that sarcastically. His songs are some of the funniest songs I've ever heard in my life. I mean, really. I mean, not that the 'Girlfriend in a Coma' is, like, really funny.

I'd like to say that parody is a celebration of a person's specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery.

There are bands that make parodies of being in a band, like Spinal Tap. That's a big influence. They're making fun of a rock band, but they write lyrics that are better than real rock bands.

It's very difficult to be funny musically. I think I achieved It with 'The Pink Panther.'

I would say, generally speaking, though it is not always the case, comedy is probably the least gratifying for most composers because it is more specific about what the music needs to do.

It is easy to misunderstand what a comedy song is, or what its potential is. I'm used to musical comedy being maligned as an easy artform.

That's what I love about 'MADtv': If you exist, if you breathe, we will take you down.

Who can fail to mist at Fergie's anthem, 'My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.' Hmmm. 'My lunch, my lunch, I swear it's coming up.

She had been critical of his new torch song, "A Side Order of Heartache, Please," suggesting it could be used as a good way to break in their new paper shredder.

The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals.

Good painter imitates nature, bad ones spews it up.

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.

It is a challenge. When you do things that are comedy, you're having to look at the funnier side of life. Often I find Christians - but not just Christians, (any) people who have a certain core belief of things - don't like to have fun made of them at all.

Today I realize that many recent exercises in "deconstructive reading" read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.

Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.

I do not make jokes about Sarah Palin simply because I could not live in this world if I believed she was a real person.