About this item
From his love of accordions and Hawaiian print shirts to his popular puns and trademark dance moves, "Weird Al" Yankovic has made a career out of making us laugh.Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Yankovic's fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. In this book, for the first time, the parodies, original compositions, and polka medleys of the Weird Al universe finally receive their due respect. Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music's complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic's jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes.
About the Author
Lily E. Hirsch is visiting scholar at California State University, Bakersfield. She studied music history as an undergraduate at the University of the Pacific and earned her Ph.D. in musicology from Duke University. She then taught as a professor of music at Cleveland State University. She is the author of A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany: Musical Politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League (University of Michigan Press in 2010) , Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment (University of Michigan Press in 2012) , Anneliese's Life in Music: Nazi Germany to Émigré California (Eastman Studies in Music in 2019) , and, as co-editor, Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (Oxford University Press in 2014) , winner of the American Musicological Society's Ruth A. Solie Award. In addition to chapters in Rethinking Schumann, Sound Studies, and the Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music, she has published articles in Musical Quarterly, Philomusica, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, American Music, Music & Politics, Popular Music, Popular Music & Society, the journal Law, Culture, and the Humanities, as well as The Guardian, Washington Post, and The Establishment.
