2. Half of his catalog is original music, people! I can’t even recount how many times I’ve heard of somebody trying to insult Al by claiming “he doesn’t even write his own music”. Well, 1. you’re a moron for making such a bold statement without actually researching anything, and 2. Weird Al’s best work is his original tracks.

3. He and his band are able to successfully record a diverse number of genres on each album. If you could think of any type of music at random, Al probably has a song (be it parody or original) in that style. Ska, punk, surf, experimental, sentimental, metal, polka, pop, ballad, just some of the genres the band has recorded.

4. Most of his original songs are actually in the style of a particular artist. Al is able to listen to the collective works of an act and then write his own completely original song in a way that makes it sound like a long lost song from that act. This is what we refer to as a ‘style parody’.

5. He has won three Grammy awards and sold more than twelve million albums in a world where comedy music is looked down on (because apparently mindless drivel about obscure love, dumbass rioting and general anti-intelligence triumphs over well-thought-out funny lyrics).

6. He has stood for thirty years as the reigning king of humorous recordings.

7. His concerts are some of the most elaborate stage shows in existence. Here are just a few things you might expect to see at a Weird Al concert: giant video screen (for playing videos with), costume changes for every freaking song, segways, back-up dancers, fake guitars, real guitars, a cell phone waved by every member of the audience, a twenty-minute long song, a medley of ten or more songs with new material written specifically for that tour, a two-minute long segment of synchronized a cappella gibberish, and maybe even the entire cast of Star Wars.

8. He has influenced a new generation of comedians and musicians to go into performing. Pat of the reason I do music right now is because of the music I heard by Al when I was younger. Other notable Al influenced artists include: MC Lars, MC Frontalot, MC Chris, Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, and many others.

9. He never ages. No matter how old Al gets his music is still greatly appreciated and his hold on popular culture humor is still very vibrant and strong. Also, on a more literal basis, the dude never ages. He’s fifty-years old right now and he still looks like he did twenty years ago… is Weird Al Benjamin Button?

10. In the world of music, it has become one of the highest honors to any artist to have Weird Al make a parody of one of their songs. In fact Nirvana front man Curt Cobain claimed that he didn’t realize that his band had made it until Al did a parody of their song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as “Smells Like Nirvana” on his 1992 album “Off the Deep End”. The art work for that particular album also parodies “Nevermind” by Nirvana. As Homer Simpson once said “He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life”.

Not coincidentally, you can, right this very second, go buy the amazing Weird Al tribute album I just produced!

1.       He wrote barely any of his songs.  For a guy who has been deemed “The King of Rock n’ Roll,” he sure couldn’t write anything.  To put it in perspective:  picture Elvis’s entire catalog of songs as the spectrum of stars in our visible universe, each representing one tune.  The amount of songs Elvis wrote would take up roughly half the Milky Way, he really wrote nothing.  Not only that, but he did a ton of cover songs, meaning he wasn’t even the first person to perform the song he didn’t write.  Though the worst of it, for me, is that for some time he actually did attest that he wrote his material, which obviously, time has proved untrue.  This is doing a great injustice to the people who actually took the time to write his songs; however terrible they may have been.  I mean, what a fraudulent dork Elvis was!  Which brings me to point #2.

2.       Elvis’ legacy on music was nothing positive.  As I’ve described above, he wrote none of his music and got all the credit for other people’s hard work, this is a mirror image of popular music today.  Hardly any famous music artist writes music and, for that matter, there’s no evidence that they can write at all.  All that seems to matter is looks nowadays.  Actual talent is eclipsed by a bitchin’ face and a rockin’ ass…a trend started by dear old Elvis.

3.          99.9998676% of Elvis’s songs were awful, in my opinion.  Now, maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t Elvis’s voice sound like a dying cat who got shot in the throat?  Is a mumbley, low-pitched, unintelligible voice all it takes to be dubbed the king of rock and roll?  Why was this guy so famous and, maybe I’m missing something, why is this guy so revered today?  Elvis is the most imitated man ever and I ask why.  WHY?

Some of you might be saying, “Hey! The Beatles were way more overrated than Elvis, and you wrote a ten point list on how great they were!” To that I say “Fuck you and your ideas, you know not what you say. Oh, misled one.” As if anybody actually reads these things.

1. Autotune:

The amount of note-improving autotune they use in this piece is just ghastly. I mean, do they have no shame? Are artists alright with it being so obvious that they can’t sing, and thus fail at the one thing they’re supposedly good for? I’m not sure, but it’s possible that Black just spoke the lyrics of this song (I’m sure she vomited several times in the process, it’s not an easy feet to look at those things), and then her production team made it sound like she was singing. You know, like the Gregory Brothers would do. In fact, just get those guys to be your songwriting and engineering squad, Rebecca. At least then you’d get some good backing vocals and instrumentation.

2. Exploitation

Black is on record as saying that her idol is Justin Bieber (admitadly, this is a strong indicator of what the quality of her work will be). It’s interesting that her and her idol would share so much in common. Rebecca Black is just the next unsuspecting child to fall victim to entertainment. She paid $2,000 to record a song she didn’t write, and now she’ll be famous for about a month, and then she’ll be screwed forever. Much like her good chum, Justin Bieber. That guy is, similarly, a stupid kid who has no fucking idea how hated and vilified he is by most of the world. Do these children disserve the loathing they get? The answer is no. They’re kids, they’re just really, really dumb. They don’t realize how shitty this music truly is, I bet when they grow up (if they have any artistic integrity at all) they’ll be ashamed of this terrible body of work they have wrought upon the world. Think about the things you thought were cool when you were at that age, no, actually, think about the things you created at that age. Would you want to make that a matter of international public record for the rest of eternity? I think not.

3. Lyrics

The people that should be hated are the people running the business, the songwriters who think this is what Earth wants to stick into its ear holes. These people think up a somewhat catchy hook, then they throw in the worst lyrics ever. Just look at some of the songs that have gotten mega-famous over the past few years: I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas, OMG by Usher, Tik Tok by Ke$ha (the dollar sign makes me laugh), and anything by Rihanna and Katy Perry. These songs all contain dumb base lyrics that a fucking thirteen-year-old could come up with. In fact, I’m surprised “Friday” is so hated at all, it’s the exact same drivel you’ve allowed to be shoved down your throat for the past ever. Why can’t we have songs that are actually provocative, songs that are about subjects other than love and ‘getting down’? Sweet nonexistent zombified Christ, can we at least get a song where people don’t fucking tell us what the days of the week are?

4. Music

I’m getting kind of sick of this over processed techno shit. I mean, its cool and all that Lady Gaga helped re-popularize it, but does everybody have to sound like that now? Can we have at least one original artist these days who can come up with new sounds and innovations (this assuming we can find someone who can actually write their own music for once…. nah, it’s asking too much)? Another good cliché this song employs is the obligatory rap verse. I heard somewhere that these verses from well-known (in this case not so much) rappers is starting to replace the guitar solo/musical break, and I totally agree. I’d much rather hear a dude who’s really talented shred on a six-stringed rock stick than a dumbass dude fast-talk over music half-unintelligibly. What happened to the Slashes and Stevie Ray Vaughns and why have they been replaced by Pitbulls and Ludacrises?

This song is the perfect example of gluttonously terrible cliché crap. This thing is less like a song and more like an endurance test. I bet soon we’ll be seeing reaction shots of people showing their unsuspecting, innocent friends the music video to this song. The camera will zoom in slowly on the viewer’s face as he or she realizes what they have been subjected to. Yes, this will be a new, much more disgusting “Two Girls, One Cup”.  Congratulations Ark Music Factory, Rebecca Black, Rebecca Black’s parents, Justin Bieber, and any other monster who had any part in creating this musical assault. You have successfully made an instant legend that will be hated for decades to come, because unfortunate for Rebecca, the internet is forever.

-Austin

February Album Writing Month (or FAWM) is an annual songwriting challenge, in which you are unreasonably tasked to write said number of brand new tracks in said amount of time. I have most certainly succeeded. I’m pretty harsh on myself as far as what I think about songs I write, but I’m really proud of most of these dern things. You should go download all of them (FOR FREE) right now.

If you love ‘em or hate ‘em, please let me know by commenting.

-Austin

2.       The Beatles created the music video.  Today, in music, it’s almost breaking an unwritten rule if a popular music act doesn’t release a music video to accompany their latest single.  In the mid to late 60′s, The Beatles started making short films to promote their new songs in order to avoid having to go on 20 different TV shows and talk about it.  They were, at that time, referred to as promotional videos.  You could argue then that this one band invented MTV and this crucial part of modern music.

3.       The Beatles invented the hidden track.  A common occurrence at the end (or sometimes the beginning) of albums today is the inclusion of an extra track an act has made that is on the disc itself but not mentioned in the track listing.  This song is known as a “hidden track.”  On their 1979 final album, “Abbey Road”, The Beatles included a studio outtake, “Her Majesty” at the end of the album.  The track was hidden well because it wasn’t mentioned on the back cover and was obscured by a long bit of silence following the album’s final track-listed song, “The End.”

4.       The Beatles helped create the concept album.  A concept album is an album where each track follows a continuous story line or common theme.  Although it’s true that none of The Beatles albums definitively fit this description; their album, “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band,” was originally planned to be one.  This album, in its released state, does show signs of this plan.  Due to that record’s widespread acclaim and influence, it’s not too difficult to see that The Beatles laid the ground work for the first real concept albums to come in the 1970′s from bands like Styx and Pink Floyd.

5.       The Beatles’ success and appeal transcends time.  It has been forty years since The Beatles broke up and they are still as famous and their songs as well known as ever.  In fact, just recently, they were ranked #1 on VH1′s “100 Greatest Artists of All Time” countdown with John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s solo work also placing in the list.  With new products such as compilations, the re-mastered box set and The Beatles: Rock Band being released constantly, it is certain that The Beatles are an immortal entity in music and indeed the world.

6.       “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Abbey Road Medley”, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, “Norwegian Wood”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “A Day in the Life”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Dear Prudence”, and “I’ve Got a Feeling”…these songs speak for themselves.

7.       The Beatles were one of the only acts to be as famous as they were awesome.  There are so many bands before, during and after that were almost as famous but made much fewer good songs or marks on the history of music.  The Beatles deserved their world-wide fame.  Artists such as, say, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Rhianna, Katy Perry, and countless other very famous artists, do not.  Though this point may be tainted with bias, I still think it’s true that The Beatles deserved their fame.

8.       The Beatles were the most successful band in the history of music.  Not only did they deserve their success but they had more of it than any other act in existence.  They have twenty number-one singles in the United States alone with plenty more than that in Britain.  They have made or inspired dozens of feature films and documentaries, have been a huge study for musicologists for years, have sold over a billion records worldwide and that’s just the beginning of their list of accomplishments.

9.       The Beatles changed the way studio dynamics worked.  Before The Beatles, it was common to have a band record their songs live in the studio and release it as mono.  When The Beatles started experimenting in the studio in the mid-sixties, they recorded in stereo and added more blends of sound than had previously existed in popular music.  As mentioned before, by adding these new instrument sounds together, they moved the rock and roll genre out of purely dance music and made it a spectacle of its own.  For example, the song, “A Day in the Life” is clearly not meant for dancing.

10.          Almost every single artist that has come after them has admitted or shown, in one composition or another, that they have been influenced by The Beatles.  The Beatles were so revolutionary, relentlessly famous and prolific that they could not help but influence most current artists.  Some might say, in fact, that The Beatles saved music from remaining in the coma that was rockabilly, and helped us to not revert back to classical.  It’s safe to say that if those four young men from Liverpool, England, hadn’t gotten together and started performing, that music today would be vastly different and much less interesting or enriching than if they had never existed.  The Beatles are the heart and soul of popular music.  The composers that wrote the soundtrack to many generations and the architects of current music culture.  I think their infamy and rabid acclaim will live on forever.

This is a song I recorded last year with nerdcore guy Devo Spice. It went on to be a triumphant 14th placer in the Dr. Demento Show’s Funny 25 of 2009, impressive, I know. I’m not all that used to making hip-hop music, but I’ve been told that the lyrics are pretty good.

The reason I’ve decided to finally release it digitally is that I heard that the amazingly talented (I mean this ironically of course) Jason Friedberg is making another terrible spoof movie, this time of the equally terrible Twilight saga. The funny thing is, the title of the movie is apparently going to be “Vampires Suck”… so naturally I want to get this out so that I can at least have proof that my track came out first.

If you want to download the song for free you can always go to my music store.

-Austin

After watching the movie today I must say, I can not think of a better film to act as a finale to my childhood (before I turn 18 in a month) than Toy Story 3. There are literally no flaws in this cinematic masterpiece and you all need to see it. Even though this movie is more personal to me than it probably is for you, you’ll still love every bit of it. I mean I cried at the end of this thing and I hardly ever do that. In fact if you don’t cry during TS3 you’re an inhuman monster.

So, any way, to close: I grew up with Toy Story, and just as it comes to a close, so goes my childhood, both flashing before my eyes, and I say, it’s only just begun…

So if you’re reading this I assume you’re wondering why I changed the name of the act from ‘Odd Austin’ to ‘Rycehat’. Well as you may know Rycehat has been a side project of mine for almost two years now, and Odd Austin has been a main project for almost five.

Over the past years I have felt a little restricted by the title ‘Odd Austin’ which is just so closely related to “Weird Al” Yankovic which just screams “comedy”. Though I love comedy music, and will certainly continue to write and perform it, I really feel like I want at least the option of doing serious, less funny, instrumental, or really just anything I want that might not be comedy. Though I myself will still go by the moniker of ‘Odd Austin’ I’ll just be ‘of Rycehat’, I think it’ll work out much better like this.

I figured this was the best time to do this, while I know I have some fans, I didn’t want to wait any longer to change the name before I got bigger and bigger (as if that would happen, but I mean just in case) before it was unchangable. I think the Rycehat name really suits a bunch of musical possibilites, much more than OA ever did.

So though I’m rather sad and also kind of freaked out about changing the name, I think in the long run this will be a really good decision.