Straight Outta Lynwood (new Weird Al album, featuring "Don't Download this Song")

Straight Outta Lynwood, Weird Al Yankovic's 12th studio album, will be released on September 26, 2006.

There was a bit of controversy concerning a song that was supposed to be released on the album, "You're Pitiful," a parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," back in June of this year when the song was released on Weird Al's website. As the story goes:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Yankovic recorded the song to be included on his Straight Outta Lynwood album after, according to Yankovic, having been given Blunt's blessing to parody the song. However, following its recording, Blunt's record company, Atlantic Records, allegedly told Yankovic that he could not include the song. (When asked by NPR, Atlantic had no official comment on the matter.)

Yankovic has a history of obtaining approval prior to releasing his parodies from the original artist's record company, however, after a miscommunication surrounding "Amish Paradise," a parody of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", he has gotten permission directly from the artist. However, Yankovic told NPR that this was the first time a record label has quashed a release of one of his parodies. "If James Blunt himself were objecting," Yankovic told NPR, "I wouldn't even offer my parody for free on my Web site. But since it's a bunch of suits — who are actually going against their own artist's wishes — I have absolutely no problem with it."

Yankovic told NPR in an e-mail that the question of whether Atlantic could legally forbid the parody, given the United States Supreme Court's 1994 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. decision recognizing parody as fair use, is "moot," saying that the issue was "more of a political matter than a legal matter," suggesting that both Blunt and Volcano (Yankovic's label) would wish to avoid alienating Atlantic.

As mentioned, Yankovic released the song for free distribution on the Internet and it has become popular on The Dr. Demento Show.

Note the bolded portion - props to Al for STICKIN' IT TO THE MAN.

More recently, he has released another song on the album as a preview, titled "Don't Download this Song." Particularly, I love the big red "Click here to DOWNLOAD THIS SONG" button. And on the matter, I have to agree with what Crash Landon said:

<Crash> That might be one of the best songs released in the last decade.
<Pom> whoa now
<Crash> I mean it.
<Crash> It slaps the entire music industry in its cocksucking face. I'm totally cool with that.

The album will also include parodies of songs from Green Day, Chamillionaire, R. Kelly, and Usher - the only one known so far is a parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty," "White and Nerdy."

Personally, while I'm not as familiar with the songs he parodies as I used to be, I still love getting his albums for his original songs (which I generally consider to be the better songs anyways on most of his albums). Already "Don't Download this Song" proves this album not to be an exception.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Merv Burger

I downloaded the album alreadly (lol torrents,)

Quote:

For those of you who own the Weird Al CDs, I think he puts special stuff on there aside from the music too right, like his music videos and all that? If not, is there any place where you can buy them like a DVD compilation or something? I think I've seen some DVDs of top music stars and some, but not all, of their music videos, but it's usually a mix of music and music videos on the disc, in places like Wal-Mart or what have you.

Not usually music videos, though, no. For you hooligans out there, though, here's:

-The extra on Poodle Hat, including Al's home movies, instrumental versions of several Poodle Hat songs, and all the Poodle Hat songs with lyrics (the intro to the home videos is where he says "Thanks for buying my album, instead of just downloading it off the internet like some kind of HOOLIGAN").
http://www.sendspace.com/file/y0ipbu

-The mockumentary that came on Running With Scissors
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vmuim2

As far as music videos go, the only compilation that I'm aware of is this.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Maico

Is there a secret to getting this to work? Just finally finished downloading it, but when I open it in Quicktime 7.1.3 all I can click on are the credits button at the bottom left and the close button at the bottom right. And the picture is exactly what shows up too, nothing more, nothing less, no navigational sliders at the bottom or a play button.

No idea. This is what I get when using the same version of Quicktime:


This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.