Weird Al Yankovic - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) "Gangsta's Paradise", Coolio. The 1996 spoof of the song from the movie Dangerous Minds also makes fun of Enigma's "Return to Innocence".
• A2) "The Safety Dance", Men Without Hats. If you know the Brady Bunch theme song, you know most of Weird Al's lyrics.
• A3) "Bad", Michael Jackson. This song includes some of my favorite lyrics, including "I've got more chins than chinatown", "my shadow weighs forty-two pounds", and "when you're only having seconds I'm having twenty-thirds".
• A4) "Zoot Suit Riot", Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Yankovic definitely likes his food. This parody appeared in 1999, six years after he packed ten calorific songs into The Food Album.
• A5) "Jeopardy", Greg Kihn Band. The Top 40 hit worries because "Our love's in jeopardy", while the parody hopes to score big on the game show, whose original host (Art Fleming) and announcer (Don Pardo) appear in the video.
• A6) "I Think We're Alone Now", Tiffany. Weird Al doesn't make fun of Tiffany as a cookie cutter pop star singer; he tells the story of a real cloned human.
• A7) "MacArthur Park", Donna Summer. Summer's cover of the 1968 Richard Harris song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. Yankovic's rendition ruins more than a cake as dinosaurs kill off several of the scientists.
• A8) "Like a Virgin", Madonna. Yes, even in an operating room, the surgeon eats a sandwich as he flatlines his patient.
• A9) "My Sharona", The Knack. Weird Al's version of the number one Hot 100 song also reached number one... on Dr. Demento's Funny Five countdown.
• A10) "Mickey", Toni Basil. Weird Al channels the spirit of Lucille Ball in black-and-white, although he doesn't mention her 1969 cheerleading gig in Here's Lucy.
• A11) "Ridin'", Chamillionaire. Yankovic wear braces instead of grills, rides a Segway, and slips in two Star Trek references: "I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on; I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon" and "Only question I ever thought was hard was do I like Kirk or do I like Picard". [I'm sure Weird Al would ace *this* trivia quiz!]
• A12) "Lola", The Kinks. Weird Al tells the story of The Empire Strikes Back, which doesn't have any transvestites, as far as I know.

Special mention should be made of Yankovic's "Buckingham Blues", which was originally a parody of John Cougar's "Jack and Diane". When Weird Al wanted to make a movie out of the Princess Diana and Prince Charles story, Cougar got upset, and Yankovic changed the melody.