Nicole's Editorials

Ridin' Dirty with Weird Al

This summer I spent quite a bit of time in my car driving the kids I nanny for from tennis lessons to swimming lessons to the country club and then back home again. Much of the time in the car, the radio was set to KISS 107 FM, the local pop radio station. I didn't think too much about it--the kids were allowwed to watch the "VH1 Weekly Top 20 Countdown" on Saturday mornings. I knew I had a problem, though, when the two year little girl picked up Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty" and began singing it at inopportune moments. The station was promptly changed to the dismay of all three of the kids in the back seat.

Weird Al Yankovic has seemingly helped me out with his new rendition of the popular hit, "White & Nerdy". Slate writer Sam Anderson, in his article "Troubadork", celebrates 25 years of Weird Al's parodies and his seemingly culture jamming contribution to the world of pop music.

"His parodies do important cultural work: They defuse whatever seriousness clings to the ubiquitous megahit, whatever tiny sliver of it colonizes our lives and makes us dream of a pop Xanadu where everyone has perfect abs and dances synchronously for our never-ending pleasure. He has singlehandedly tutored the MTV generation in critical thinking."

I've never thought of Weird Al as making a contribution to my critical thinking skills, but maybe I haven't given him the credit that he deserves. Yankovic has shown himself to be someone that can completely change the the intended meaning of a work, obviously many times in a very humorous way.

"Suddenly, he was not just tweaking trite lyrics and catchy melodies, but lampooning the whole overwhelming mythology of pop: the look, the movements, the feeling. "Eat It" (1984) transposed Jackson's absurd street-fighting fantasies into the harmless world of suburban mealtime; "Like a Surgeon" (1985) imported Madonna's dirty, quasi-religious writhing into an antiseptic, scrub-colored hospital."

So, thanks Weird Al, for saving me from the perils of "Ridin' Dirty". I don't know that I really enjoy the "White and Nerdy" rendition, but it's better than hearing a two year old singing about "rollin' and hatin' ".

posted by clevergirl @ 4:05 PM