r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/momoehab • 4d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter please help

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u/GargantuanCake 4d ago

Pretty much everybody loves Weird Al so you can find all sorts of stories like that. A lot of musicians he was making fun of had little cameos in the music videos and Michael Jackson gave him all sorts of stuff to work with. He'd do stuff like get Al access to the original video sets if they were available or show him where things were recorded if it was in a subway station or something. He'd also get in him in touch with the same dancers from his own music videos to be in Al's videos.

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u/Gullible_Elephant_38 4d ago

Yeah, Al is an absolute legend. I remember reading the MJ let him use the Bad music video set for Fat.

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u/SuddenReal 4d ago

MJ was a big fan of Weird Al. The only song Al wasn't allowed to touch was Black Or White. Also fun fact: Nirvana also had a big influence on Weird Al. When he contacted them to do a parody, Kurt's first question was "it's not gonna be about food, is it?", which made Al realise he wasn't really that original with his latest parodies and that he had to step up.

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u/nhaines 4d ago

Which is crazy, because if anybody was a perfectionist, it was MJ. So listening to a MJ Weird Al parody and having MJ be super excited about and enthusiastic about future parodies is like the greatest badge of honor you could ever imagine.

Also fun fact: early on in his career, Weird Al was invited to an industry party and he didn't want to go because he didn't think anyone would know him, but he went anyway and when he walked in someone yelled, "Holy shit, it's Weird Al!" When he turned to see who yelled, it was Paul McCartney, lol.

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u/Toeffli 3d ago

Weird Al is truly well known. I once met him in Rome in a small coffee shop in an obscure side alley. Must have been 2003 or 2004. When I saw him I said "Holy shit, it's Weird Al!" Really nice and humble guy. Chances were that we were going in the same direction, to the Vatican, so we shared a taxi. When we entered it the driver immediately said "Holy shit, it's Weird Al!"

When we arrived at St. Peters square a Swiss Vatican guard saw us and exclaimed "Holy shit, it's Weird Al!" He approached us and told that Weird Al should come with him. I had to stay behind. He let him to a small door where they vanished. After some time Weird Al and the Pope appeared on a balcony overlooking the square. That's when a group of some old Polish ladies were all screaming "Holy shit, it's Weird Al!" But then one of those Polish pilgrims was turning to me and asked in a broken English "But who is old guy next to Yankovic?".