List of Songs By "Weird Al" Yankovic - Misattribution and Imitators

Misattribution and Imitators

Yankovic's official website has the following note:

Unfortunately, there are a lot of song parodies floating around the Internet being attributed to Al which are in fact done by somebody else. "Star Wars Cantina," "Windows 95 Sucks," "Living La Vida Yoda," "Combo No. 5," "What If God Smoked Cannabis," "He Got The Wrong Foot Amputated" (the list goes on and on ... some of the titles are unprintable in a family-friendly web site) - these songs are NOT by Al. If you want to verify whether or not a song is actually by Al, check the Catalogue page.

Because Yankovic is arguably the most successful parody artist, songs posted to file sharing networks are often misattributed to him due to their humorous subject matter. Much to the disdain of Yankovic, this includes songs that are racist, sexually explicit, or otherwise offensive. A young listener who had heard several of these offensive tracks by way of a file sharing service confronted Yankovic online, threatening a boycott due to his supposedly explicit lyrics.

Yankovic cites these misattributions as "his real beef with P2P sites:"

If you do a search for my name on any one of those sites, I guarantee you that about half of the songs that come up will be songs I had absolutely nothing to do with. That particularly bothers me, because I really try to do quality work, and I also try to maintain a more-or-less family-friendly image – and some of these songs that are supposedly by me are just … well, vulgar and awful. I truly think my reputation has suffered in a lot of people's minds because of all those fake Weird Al songs floating around the Internet.

A list of songs not by Yankovic can be found at The Not Al List. Alternatively, a list of all commercially released songs recorded by Yankovic can be found on his website's Recording Dates Page.

Read more about this topic:  List Of Songs By "Weird Al" Yankovic

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