Nearly 40 years ago “Weird Al” Yankovic began building his fan base the old-fashioned way: radio. “I’m not saying the album is a dying format or that it’s not a valid medium,” he said. Those albums have sold more than 9.2 million copies in the U.S. since Nielsen Music began monitoring retail sales in 1991. Many of his songs have tweaked the overarching seriousness of the entertainment world while also demonstrating a canny grasp of what is au courant in the pop music world at any given time. Don McLean, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are among the many acts who fell in Yankovic’s crosshairs.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 23, 2017 00:00 UTC