'Weird Al' never did a parody of a Prince song and never will for a pretty cool reason
Prince was the only celebrity that told 'Weird Al' Yankovic 'no' to a parody song.
"Weird Al" never did a parody of a Prince song and never will.
It seems as though everyone knows who Prince was. His music crossed generations and had most of the world belting out tunes like "Raspberry Beret" and "1999," but it turns out there was one celebrity that had to keep their hands off of his songs.
"Weird Al" Yankovic explained on "The Drew Barrymore Show" that there was only one musician that turned him down on making a parody of his songs. It was Prince. The man was serious about his music and even after his death there were supposedly more than 8,000 songs that were in his vault never having been released.
But one would think after the musician's death in 2016 that Yankovic would simply ask his estate permission to parody one of the songs. It's obvious that most of the songs are timeless gems that are easily recognizable and people still listen to fairly regularly. So why didn't he? The answer may take you by surprise.
Yankovic made a career out of doing parodies of popular songs, with his first big hit being a play on Madonna's "Like a Virgin" except his was titled "Like a Surgeon." The video questionably had a lion in the operating room of a surgeon, played by Yankovic, hoping not to get sued for malpractice. Yankovic famously did a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," but his version was called "Eat It" and he stuffed his face with all kinds of sweets while he sang funny new lyrics.
The parody king could hit the top of the charts all over again with a Prince song but don't hold your breath. "I had a lot of what I thought were good ideas and he never was into it," Yankovic told Barrymore. When talking about asking the estate for permission, he said, "I don't want to do that because I've always respected the artist's wishes and Prince made his wishes pretty clear. I still respect that."
What a cool thing for Yankovic to do when plenty of people likely would've taken the opportunity. Watch the exchange below.