"Weird Al" Yankovic: Straight Outta Lynwood : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For more than twenty years, "Weird Al" Yankovic has been making generations of seventh-graders extremely happy with his precisely crafted parodies of recent chart hits. (It's harder than it looks.) His twelfth album doesn't screw with the formula: Yankovic tackles Chamillionaire ("White & Nerdy"), Usher ("Confessions Part III") and Green Day ("Canadian Idiot"). The disc also includes six videos, original songs like "Weasel Stomping Day" and Yankovic's customary polka medley of recent hits (who knew Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" would sound so good on accordion?). The highlight is Yankovic's take on something that would already seem way beyond parody: R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet." In almost eleven minutes of "Trapped in the Drive-Thru," Yankovic finds slow-motion comedy gold in a couple arguing over dinner ("I said, 'There's tuna, I know'/She said, 'That went bad a week ago' "). The moral: "Weird Al" is funniest when he's singing about food.