My Weirder Al Playlist (3 of 4)

With the one song I can only play in private.

Some of Weird Al’s material “grew up” along with his fans—he moved away from songs about food and hyperactive Pee-Wee-Herman energy to subject matter that an eight-year-old wouldn’t always get. But thirty years after his “Dare to Be Stupid” showed up in a PG-rated cartoon about robots killing each other, he popped up in the end credits for Captain Underpants.

Al drops in a reference or two to the plot of the movie and the books on which it’s based. “Snap your fingers and he’ll be right there” is a twist on the hypnotic finger-snap that brings the Captain Underpants personality to the surface.

But most of this song’s humor doesn’t require any knowledge of the lore: it’s a set of plays on the stuff that’s key to the characer’s appeal—underpants, bathroom humor, and kid-friendly superheroes. From there, all Al needs is some alliteration or rhyme or colorful phrasing to tie the themes together. “Waistband warrior.” “Bustin’ down doors wearin’ only his drawers.” “All the bad guys soil themselves.”

For Janice and me, the movie was a fun way to pass the time, but that closing-credits theme song? Best end-of-film surprise since Keyser Soze.

Some songs get my waterworks going for reasons I can’t always explain, and “Perform This Way” is one of them. Watching the video only intensifies the effect. I’m a sensitive guy; I don’t mind admitting that. But these reactions do puzzle me a little—they don’t come about because of deep sadness or even deep joy.

If I had to put a button on it, I’d say that what triggers them is a feeling of artistic greatness. Al's craft is at the top of his game; every idea lands; it’s fine-tuned to what the audience wanted to see from Al at the time of release. And yet it’s all so personal. The playful jabs at Lady Gaga get the job done (the meat dress, the Madonna influence, the H-I-M spelling in “Born This Way”). But this is Weird Al celebrating himself and anyone else (including Gaga) who’s ever felt weird, and all that just syncs up with the liberation anthem that is Gaga’s original.

For me, it completes a trilogy begun with “Dare to Be Stupid” and continued with “White and Nerdy.” Al’s done other tongue-in-cheek celebratory songs such as “I Love Rocky Road,” “Handy,” and “Tacky,” but in those, he’s playing more specific characters. In “Perform This Way,” he’s going nude today.

Janice and I were Yankovic fans long before we knew each other. But we do part ways when it comes to Al’s longer, more experimental work. Clocking in at 11 minutes 23 seconds, this is his longest song ever—not his longest musical performance, but later for that.

The shaggy dog story wanders this way and that. But it paints a picture Jean-Paul Sartre might have appreciated. Our chipper protagonist, a chaotic guy in a chaotic world, manages to find some happiness by taking life as it comes. Filled with love for a city he’s not sure how to spell, he breezes in and out of relationships, workplace drama, and lifelong vendettas. After all, no matter what happens, at least it’s better than his childhood of being force-fed sauerkraut.

The song feels like it pokes fun at the whole act of storytelling. Maybe that’s why it hits a chord with me: it takes me to a world where not every bit of writing needs to point in one direction. Like the nearly as long “Trapped In The Drive-Thru,” it’s a fun ditty for when I want to kill some time—and Janice is not in the room.