A lot of these songs are raunchy, offensive, and the lead vocal vaguely sounds like Al, so since Al is the most-visible parody musician, his name gets attached to them, despite having subject matter and lyrics he would never touch. Since there are a lot of songs floating around LimeWire and other peer-to-peer networks falsely attributed to Al, The Not Al List was created to catalog these. Responsible for the 'Weird Al' Effect, where a parody remains popular long after the original, and his habit of using pop cultural metaphors (AKA 'Pulling a Weird Al') led to his being the former trope namer for that. At the ceremony, he requested that no one smash it with a pickaxe, unless he does 'something unfathomably monstrous and evil'.

On August 27, 2018, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Al is very sympathetic to geek communities and frequently gives them recognition in his songs. To those not in the know, it sounds exactly like the original. The most extreme example is in 'Trapped in the Drive-Thru', based off 'Trapped in the Closet' by R. Unlike other parodic artists, Al and his band (who have been together since the 80s) from the second album on (the first album used accordion on every track in keeping with Al's trademark talent) have kept extremely close to the original melodies and instrumentation of the parodied song. Usually releases a new album and goes on tour once every 2-3 years, thus John Garabedian of Open House Party has stated that 'Every album is his comeback album, and then he goes away until the next one.' However, after the release of 2014's Mandatory Fun (and the end of his multi-album contract with his label), Al announced that all his future releases would be individual tracks posted directly to the Web.

He had a recent cameo (as himself) in the Scooby-Doo crossover episode of Batman the Brave And The Bold, where he defeated the Joker with his accordion. He has been involved with the Transformers franchise twice: his song 'Dare To Be Stupid' was played in the 1986 movie, and he provided the voice of Wreck-Gar in Transformers Animated.

He provided the voice of the Squid Hat on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. In 1989, Weird Al starred in the film UHF, and he had a short-lived CBS 'kids' show' in the 1990s, The Weird Al Show. Despite a slow start, including a disastrous opening for Missing Persons, Weird Al released his first album on Scotti Bros. The Knack's lead singer heard 'My Bologna', contacted Al, and got 'My Bologna' released as a single. D Superstar' (never aired), and 'My Bologna', a parody of 'My Sharona' by The Knack. When he went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for an architecture degree, he worked for the school's radio station as a disc jockey, where he got the nickname 'Weird Al'. Raised in Lynwood, Al got an accordion and lessons for his seventh birthday according to him, his parents made the decision because 'The world needed one more accordion-playing Yankovic' (the first being Frankie, who isn't related). Alfred Matthew Yankovic (born October 23, 1959, in Downey, California), is a musical humorist with a career spanning thirty years.

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