Weird Al - "This Song's Just Six Words Long" CONTROVERSY

Wait til you find out about Loudon Wainwright III's "This Song Don't Have a Video"!

It is not, and this bugged the hell outta me as a kid. All the words count, and there are considerably more than six of them.

this has always bugged me because it is more than six words long, but still voting option 4 in the name of consistency.

just so we're clear, this is a legally binding poll, so anybody voting four will be held accountable if the unthinkable happens to Billy

as a kid I annoyed the shit out of my dad with this song.

"but he's singing tons of words, about how he didn't write words"

"those don't count son"

"he's saying this song IS just six words long"

"no, it's 'song's', you're just hearing it wrong"

"can we have Steak'Ums tonight"

"no, it is your brother's turn to eat this week"

What's Billy have to do with all of this?

I thought the George Harrison song was annoyingly repetitive when it was all over the radio so I appreciated what Weird Al was trying to say, although his song was also annoyingly repetitive.

What's Billy have to do with all of this?

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Friday, July 22, 2022 3:31 PM bookmarkflaglink

he is the puppetmaster of all music

if I'm so vain to think this song is about me, why is she addressing me in the first place?

the original, James Ray version!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1E6xvM7PeA

including an extra set of lyrics and a melodic bit that Harrison skipped

There's three of us but we're not the Beatles

This poll is skewed by having the option to kill Billy Joel

^ this, PLUS, the other meta lyrics about how he couldn't think of words COUNT TOO, there are way more than six words.

but the disturbing thing is that anyone could hear the chorus as "song's" rather than "song is" - there are clearly two syllables there!

It wouldn't even be 6 words long if he sang the same words more than once. It would be "this song has six unique words".

xpost Genius.com tackled that at (as usual) way more length than necessary, lol

imagining his writing process on this one is increasingly hilarious for me, like imagining him tearing his head out at 1am trying to decide between "six" (incorrect) "seven" (doesn't fit the rhythm) or "eight" (also incorrect).

*hair out

btw this poll will determine if we indict Weird Al in federal court

this song has just siiiiix words

(silence for rest of song)

It's less absurd that the song is wrong in itself and more absurd that he bothered to write this as a parody where the sole, extremely thin premise of the parody is wrong.

Imagine Billy Joel ghostwriting this for George Harrison

>> len('this song's just six words long'.split()) = 6
>> len('this song's just six words long. this song's just six words long.'.split()) = 12

There it is, your honor

other angles he could have taken

"I caught my mom sniffing glue"
"This bat has too much pine tar" (George Brett incident)

yeah this has always bothered me since Al seems like the kind of guy who sweats the small details and this is a pretty big one

lol neanderthal

I Coughed On My Sister's Shoe
I Bought A Mine (Pickaxe Too)
I Lost-A My Kangaroo (Mario's Down Under Lament)
I Cooked a Lime Salmon Stew

It's not one of his best - but I think all these incongruities (and the half-assed nature of the parody) are kind of funny in themselves, and suit the original song in sort of a meta way. Maybe that's overthinking it, lol

this thread is just
28 posts long

now it's just 29 posts long

ffs, how hard would this have been:

“This Song’s Only Six Words Long”

I remember talking about this with someone in like 2nd grade who was convinced the title was "This Song Just's Six Words Long."

that would require awkwardly putting emphasis on the wrong syllable of "only" xp

Own Lee, the Lone Lee

Would like to go for "This Song's Just Six Words Long is absolutely fine and correct, however the other meta lyrics about how he couldn't think of words COUNT TOO, there are way more than six words."

This Song's Just Six Words Long is absolutely fine and correct

It might be if that's what he sang!

Neanderthal otm. And ONly isn’t nearly as awkward as SANta moniCA bouleVARD, and that thing was a huge hit.

OK who else didn’t know that the George Harrison song was a cover?

We Did Not Start The Fire

xp I didn't know! (or maybe once knew, but forgot)

Billy Joel should be killed

"But sir, that's not--"

“This Song’s Just Six Words Long is fine, but the real crime is the shitty drum machine snare that doesn’t sound anything like the big 80s gated drums that you hear on the George Harrison recording.”

But

It's gonna take money

Neanderthal otm. And ONly isn’t nearly as awkward as SANta moniCA bouleVARD, and that thing was a huge hit.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 22 July 2022 22:06 (yesterday) link

Thought of this thread today when I overheard “burning up his fuse out HERE A-lone”

the original, James Ray version!

You know, I never knew the Harrison version was a cover until the original was used in Last Night in Soho

oh really? still haven't seen that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

SANta moniCA bouleVARD

As a kid, I used to sing about a "couple of bards"

It had to be six words, because the original song title is six words long. You can't joke about a song being seven words long when the song title is six words long. "Got My Mind Set On You" - "This Song's Just Six Words Long" - you read those two titles back to back, you have the punchline already. The joke has landed before you even hear the song.

It's not titled This Song's Just Six Syllables Long. If that were the title, that would be a real conundrum. He sings "this song's just six words long." I think where everybody is getting confused is that Al sings "apostrophe s" as "uzz", which, while not accepted as standard in Al's birthplace of Lynwood, California, is plentiful in his mother's native Kentucky.

The Santa Monica Boulevard thing is kind of cool

And also the next line is "I sometimes cry", not "and sometimes Y".

I remember knowing that "Got My Mind" was a cover, which prompted me to pop open Google Books and see if contemporary reviews pointed it out. Which drew me to this issue of Billboard from July 1962 that actually mentions the original song, in a little boxout about James Ray's album:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mhcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT21&dq=%22james%20ray%22%20%22got%20my%20mind%20set%20on%20you%22&pg=PT21#v=onepage&q=%22james%20ray%22%20%22got%20my%20mind%20set%20on%20you%22&f=false

It gets four stars. "Ray enjoyed action a few months back with a single, "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody", and here's his first LP, including that hit side, plus a number of other creditable performances. These include tunes of varying backgrounds - "St. James Infirmary," Come Rain or Come Shine," and a fine, down-home effort, "The Old Man and the Mule." A solid rocker, "I've Got My Mind Set on You," can also grab good play. Producer and conductor of the date is Hutch David and he's done a good job."

So, it's a solid rocker. And according to Billboard it's actually eight words long, because it's "I Have Got My Mind Set On You". The top stereo LP that week was the soundtrack to West Side Story, and at #10 was also West Side Story, but a recording of the original cast. The rest of the chart is dominated with soundtracks. I'm surprised that Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary coexisted with Chubby Checker, Dave Brubeck, and Roy Orbison, but they did.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I didn’t vote, but this song pisses me off, and the George Harrison record pisses me off too. First of all, the original non-hit tune is 10x better than Harrison’s pointless cover. And then Yankovic, a guy who fashions himself as a nerd, can’t even count to 7. This whole whole episode is embarrassing for all concerned.

You guys are all wrong. The song is just Five words long.

https://ibb.co/xjQQVj9

This is really all George Harrison’s fault for leaving out a whole verse of the song, which threw the door wide open for the master parodist Yankovitz to pounce

As the poster who brought this up in the first place, I have this to say:

This song is just Yanni/Laurel

the people have spoken. Billy Joel is being located

It's "couple o' vargs" like the shithead from burzum.

Since George's definitive version is a cover, this means (I think) all but one of the parodies on Even Worse were of cover versions.

Guessing Bad/Fat entailed an expensive royalty payout? The others were La Bamba, I Think We're Alone Now, and Mony Mony.

a big check for Tommy James

has anybody checked on Billy Joel

this shit still bothers me I really think Weird Al should not have made this song

stain on his legacy

Guessing Bad/Fat entailed an expensive royalty payout?

I thought Al’s thing was to approach the artist for their blessing as a courtesy, but not to pay royalties (as his parodies qualify as fair use).

He needs permission from the artist so he can get credited (and collect the royalties from) for his new lyrics.

Like as an ASCAP/BMI thing?

Sounds like he works out a royalty arrangement with the artist so he won't get sued

Part of his agreement with a songwriter whose work he is parodying would involve coming up with a share split, which might not be a split at all (100% to the original writers) if they don't want to give up anything, and he still wants to record his version.

"I gotta fill time" is funny u guys are nuts

this is the only thing that makes me actually like that godawful song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOIVBdb0G4A

wait ... what is a godawful song?