Weird Al Yankovic Pulled Out of ai Ad Despite Offer to Make a ‘Nice Pile of Money’: ‘I Can’t Be the Poster Boy for ai’

The story behind Perform This Way is also great:

In April 2011, Yankovic reported that Lady Gaga refused him permission to release "Perform This Way", which he had hoped to use as the lead single for his upcoming album. Yankovic had originally sent the request to parody the song to Gaga's manager, who responded that they would need to see his lyrics to make an assessment. Yankovic was touring in Australia at the time, and hastily created the lyrics for approval.[7] Yankovic further stated that Gaga's management insisted on reviewing a recorded version of the song, and he had cut a family vacation short to turn the recorded version around.[7] Ultimately, he was told that she refused to allow the parody.[8] Yankovic had considered the song key to his Alpocalypse album, but due to the rejection, he had begun the process to postpone its release until he could record a new song to take the place of "Perform This Way".[9]

Following the refusal, he released his parody online on April 20, 2011, and encouraged donations to the Human Rights Campaign. Yankovic was initially fearful of parodying Gaga's song, considering it "an important gay-rights anthem", but had hit upon making the parody about Gaga's fashion, and tying in the sales of the song and video to charity as an act of "good karma" due to the human rights message of the original song.[6][7]

Shortly after its upload to YouTube, word about the song spread among Yankovic's fans, primarily along Twitter, according to Yankovic,[9] and the video had received over 2 million views.[7] The word spread to Lady Gaga and her staff, and eventually it was discovered she herself had not yet heard the song and the refusal had come from Gaga's manager without her input.[10][11] As Lady Gaga is "a huge Weird Al fan",[12] she subsequently gave Yankovic the green light to include the song on his upcoming album and said she loved the parody.[13][14] Lady Gaga later considered being parodied by Yankovic as a "rite of passage" for her musical career and considered the song "very empowering".[15] Within a day of receiving permission to use the parody, Yankovic had reaffirmed the song's inclusion on Alpocalypse and was able to set the day of release for the album; Yankovic claimed that "Twitter saved my album".[9] Regardless of Gaga's permission, Yankovic will still contribute sales of the song to charity.[9]

Meanwhile Chamillionaire loved the parody of his "Ridin" (White & nerdy) so much he put it on his MySpace page and thanked Weird Al when he won a Grammy.

Also, Lady Gaga had no idea she was getting a Weird Al parody because her manager didn't communicate with her and was a dick to Al.

As I understand it, lots of musicians consider it an honor to have Weird Al approach them for a parody. He's respectful, appreciates creativity, and up front about everything he does. IIRC Lady Gaga was thrilled when approached. And the man is seriously talented; he can reproduce songs by ear, which is incredible, and if I believe me actually wrote The Saga Begins before the movie was actually in theaters, based entirely off of trailers and stuff. Which that's true that's fucking incredible.

Yeah, that sounds right. I’d honestly forgotten how many original songs he’s written. I just realized there’s a comprehensive list here.

He did both his ones based on other's songs and original songs, but didn't do all the costumes and big production stuff on that tour. They did play at least one of those original songs in a completely different musical style among other variations from the original styles. It was just the musicians on stage in a smaller venue doing fun stuff and it was a blast.

Funny enough, despite being a fan of him as a kid in the 80s that was the first time I saw him on tour because I just didn't really go to many concerts. Saw him on the next(?) tour where it was the large venue and it was also a blast but with tons of costume changes, sets, and all kinds of over the top showmanship. Both were fantastic!

Funny of you to invoke the Luddites. Have you ever actually read about the Luddites beyond the pop-culture use of them as dismissive of people reluctant about technology? They were far from irrationally hate-filled.

They objected to the mass unemployment, child labor, and pathetic wages of the time. Living conditions for working class had broadly worsened. Significantly facilitated by technology that facilitated the owners inflicting those conditions. The technology had undermined the leverage of the working class. Rather than the technology making it better for all, it was a way to concentrate wealth into a smaller few and harm the welfare of others. So in early days, they would damage the instruments of the industrial exploitation. The government response was to make such damage to property even without any personal injury punishable by death, and started killing people of the movement before the movement escalated to any violence on people, protecting the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

Anyway, folks have similarly offered a great deal of legitimate grievances on the realities of AI usage, it also is far from irrational. For the folks referenced in this article, it's how the technology in practice has harmed art, and it's hard to disagree with that sentiment as we get bombarded by waves of slop that superficially resembles content, but is ultimately devoid of substance. Also, again we are seeing ambitions of even further concentrating wealth without real plans to have anyone share in hypothetical boons.

Absolutely, was just talking about this yesterday, if nothing else it at least needs to start becoming more socially unacceptable to be so unbelievably greedy.

Nichelle Nichols

Absolutely, although Mr. Rogers would be in the "liked" tense, sadly. He was too good for this world.

wait till ya learn about the Dotless I: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotless_I

Yeah I'm gonna be that guy. He ended Tenacious D over Kyle making a joke about Trump not getting shot.

Keanu Reeves

Què?