“Weird Al” Yankovic has five Grammys, an Emmy, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the first comedy album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. He’s a living pop culture legend — and he’s probably the only such artist who could get generations of fans excited by releasing a polka. But here were are in the year 2024, “Weird Al” is back with “Polkamania,” and we couldn’t be more pumped to get down with the oom-pah-pah.
“Polkamania” arrives to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Mandatory Fun, “Weird Al’s” last album and his only No. 1 record. The mashup marks his first polka medley since he contributed “The Hamilton Polka” to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamildrop” series in 2018, and his first to feature songs from different artists since Mandatory Fun’s “NOW That’s What I Call Polka.”
This time around, he’s given the accordion makeover to tracks like Billie Eilish’s “bad guy,” Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “vampire,” Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” and (God help us all) Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP.”
“A lot of those artists are ones that would be great to do parodies of,” “Weird Al” tells Consequence. “I just haven’t been so focused on doing the straight ahead parodies in the last few years. I’ve been focusing on other media. But yeah, a lot of the artists in ‘Polkamania’ are ones that certainly would be great targets at some point.”
Although we’d still love to hear the Great British Bake Off-themed parody of “Shake It Off,” polka medleys have been part of the “Weird Al” universe since the very early days of his career — and even earlier. “It goes back to my teenage days,” he explains. “I found out when I was very young that my friends thought it was funny when I played any rock song on the accordion. They just thought that was humorous, and everything sounded like a polka on the accordion.”
Over 40 years later, “Polkamania” confirms that popular songs played on accordion are still incredibly funny. To rejoice in the timelessness of his unique form of comedy covers, we sat down with “Weird Al” himself to dissect all 14 of his polka medleys. Listen to “Polkamania” and see what “Weird Al” Yankovic has to say about all his mashups below.
“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Polkamania” artwork