And That's Why You Do It

The summer's about to be very exciting for "Weird Al" Yankovic fans, as the master parodist will embark on his Bigger & Weirder Tour, playing some of the biggest venues of his career. (He'll play Madison Square Garden for the first time ever on July 12, plus dates at The Forum in Los Angeles and Riot Fest in Chicago.) Much to my excitement, Al gave two new podcast interviews this week ahead of the trek, appearing on Choice Words with Samantha Bee and NPR's Wild Card with Rachel Martin.

The Bee taping is great, with a hilarious story of how the series figures into a recent, brief hacking of Al's Facebook page. But the interview with Martin closed with a really moving anecdote that felt worth sharing today. Yankovic recalls a memory of taping an episode of @midnight the week his last album, 2014's Mandatory Fun, was released. The record's rollout was masterful, punctuated by videos for almost every track—and the end result was an unprecedented debut at No. 1 for a comedy album, the first time an LP in the genre topped Billboard's survey since Allan Sherman's trips to the top in 1962 and 1963. Al found out about the achievement when manager Jay Levey, his wife Suzanne, daughter Nina and in-laws surprised him in the green room with the news; you can see he's still emotional about the memory. (His reaction a day later leads off a must-read 2014 profile in Rolling Stone.)

That news was pretty great for fans, too. While I didn't openly define myself by my Al fandom, I was an open admirer ever since borrowing a cassette of Alapalooza from a cousin; once I got a CD copy of 1999's Running with Scissors, I would soon acquire all of his albums. I vividly remember when the admiration first took on a bit more serious angle, though.

As a student at Seton Hall University, I possessed the right mix of ambition and timidity to hang around the editorial board of The Setonian, the campus' weekly newspaper, to see if they needed any help beyond the writing I would contribute. I would aid copy edits and get quotes as needed, and ingratiate myself into the staff. One Wednesday night, as another issue was assembled, I heard a familiar voice singing from someone's computer: Al's Straight Outta Lynwood had recently been released, spawning his biggest hit, the Top 10 "White & Nerdy," and it was soundtracking production night.

My eyes widened. "Wow, is that Weird Al?" I asked someone. "I didn't know other people liked him." At that moment, my arts editor—a Belushi-lite frat brother with distinctive mutton-chop sideburns—whipped around in his chair and, for the first time I could recall, looked me directly in the eye with a stunning, sober clarity. "Weird Al's a genius," he declared. OK! I thought, maybe I'm not alone on this.

When Mandatory Fun peaked at No. 1, I had just begun a full-time job at the music catalogue label I'd dreamed of working at for years. It felt nice to see someone as talented (and, by all accounts, kind) as Yankovic succeed so brightly, not unlike the feeling that comes with your favorite sports team clinching the championship game. It would be about a year before I was entrusted with helping run editorial affairs for a career-spanning box set of Yankovic's works, a two-year journey that culminated in multiple Al concerts, some gratifying face time with the man, a friendship with his archivist/drummer, a fascinating podcast appearance, and the thrill of seeing Al and two deserving graphic designers picking up a Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.

It feels silly to get excited when a famous artist you don't know is successful, just the same way it feels a little gauche to relive past glories in prose. But the fresh emotional reaction of a good guy winning felt like a good reminder—both to myself and to you—to check in with the moments that become reasons for why you pursue the passions that mean something to you. There's certainly nothing weird about that!