Animated Short (One-A-Day) & The Tune: Weird Al Yankovic Animated Music Videos - "Word Crimes" & "Don't Download This Song".

 Who is Weird Al Yankovic?

For those of you who are not familiar with the music of 'Weird Al', he is a extremely talented music artist and musical comedian who has been creating comedy songs and parody songs of contemporary artists for over 40 years. Including, recreating and performing in parody versions of the contemporary music videos. Starting in the 1970's he has created over 150 parody songs and sold more than 12 million albums. Creating parody songs such as 'Eat it-1984' (Beat it by Michael Jackson - 1983), 'Armish Paradise - 1996' (Gangsta's Paradise by Colio - 1996), and 'Smells Like Nirvana -1992' (Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana 1992). However, in this post we are looking at two of Weird Al's songs 'Don't Download this Song' and 'Word Crimes'. Both of which were visualised using animation.

"Don't Download this Song" - 2006

'Don't Download the Song' is a comedy song which captures a specific period in music and internet history. At the end of the 1990's 'Peer-to-Peer' file-sharing programs had emerged, such as Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire. These allowed users to freely share music (films and software) across the internet for the first time. Pirating music by ripping, uploading, downloading, and burning music instead of buying official CD's. This became a huge problem for the music industry who were slow to adopt the internet for sales. It wasn't until Steve Jobs (Apple) stepped in to 'help' the music industry regain control by creating ITunes that things changed. Jobs convinced major music labels to sell music through their 'locked' software and therefore reduced the need for piracy by increasing access to downloadable music. With that said, piracy is still a huge problem to this day. As part of Weird Al's parody of this period, he made the song freely (illegally?) available to download on his MySpace (early type of Facebook) page using a 'DRM-free' MPEG file format as well as his YouTube channel. "Don't Download this Song" is also aminated by the famous animator Bill Plympton.

"Word Crimes" - 2014

"Word Crimes" is a parody of the 2013 single "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, featuring Pharrell Williams and T.I. The song spoofs misuse of proper English grammar and usage, reflecting Yankovic's own rigor for proper syntax and semantics. Yankovic chose a topic that would be distinct from those used in many pre-existing parodies, and that would avoid the misogyny issues that had arisen from the source material.