After his disappointing third album
\nDare To Be Stupid<\/i>, “Weird Al” Yankovic had two choices for
\nhis fourth album: release something that would raise the bar of
\nexpectations for his kind of comedy, or put out something that
\ncould well relegate him to “Trivial Pursuit” material.<\/p>\n
From the cover of
\nPolka Party!<\/i>, one can almost guess which route Yankovic
\ntook. If
\nDare To Be Stupid<\/i> was merely disappointing,
\nPolka Party!<\/i> is almost a complete flop. One almost wishes
\nthat this one was merely a “contractual obligation” album.<\/p>\n
Granted, there wasn’t much in the form of popular music which
\nwas deserving of Yankovic’s style of parody in 1986 – quick,
\nwithout referencing any book or website, name a major hit from that
\nyear. ‘Nuff said. Yet Yankovic and his dedicated backing band
\ncontinue to hack away at the dreck that passed for pop music at
\nthis time. Unfortunately, the saying “garbage in, garbage out”
\nproves to be true.<\/p>\n
Yankovic tries to put a good spin on DeBarge’s “Who’s Johnny”
\nwith his tribute to Johnny Carson, “Here’s Johnny”. Yawn. Yankovic
\ntries to take an already piss-poor attempt at pop with “Ruthless
\nPeople” and turns it into “Toothless People”. Yuck. Yankovic even
\nfalls flat tackling the “hardest working man in show business,”
\nparodying James Brown on “Living With A Hernia”. It’s almost enough
\nto make you wish that death was imminent.<\/p>\n
Normally, Yankovic can pull his fat out of the fire when the
\nparodies fall flat through his original compositions. Yet even
\nthese can’t save
\nPolka Party!<\/i> from itself. “Dog Eat Dog” has its moments as a
\nTalking Heads-style number, while “Good Enough For Now” is a
\nhalf-baked attempt at humorous country. Even the “legendary”
\n“Christmas At Ground Zero” fails to impress. (Post-9\/11 reference:
\nThe “Ground Zero” reference is to nuclear war.)<\/p>\n
Like its predecessor,
\nPolka Party!<\/i> sounds like Yankovic is going through the
\nmotions, churning out product just to have it on the shelves.
\nRightfully so, Yankovic would take a break for a few years after
\nthis turkey hit – and would revitalize his career with his parody
\nof Michael Jackson’s “Bad”. But
\nPolka Party!<\/i> seemed like it could well have been the “last
\ncall” for Yankovic, and you’d be wise to avoid it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6172],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-37486","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-weird-al-yankovic","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37486"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37486"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}