Mandatory Fun

Editors’ Notes Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson—the platinum-selling song parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic has had a longer career than all of them. With the release of Mandatory Fun, the kinky-haired satirist is approaching his fourth decade lampooning pop music. In Al's hands, Lorde's "Royals" becomes "Foil," a song about food preservation and alien invasions (you'll see). Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" is transformed into a grammatical object lesson in "Word Crimes," while "Handy," a goof on Iggy Azalea's ubiquitous summer jam "Fancy," finds Al boasting of his contractor skills (sample lyric: "I've got 99 problems but a switch ain't one"). Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" makes a cameo on the requisite polka track "Now That's What I Call Polka." The real showstopper, though, is "Jackson Park Express": a nine-minute Yankovic original in the style of a vintage rock opera.