'Mandatory Fun' Becomes First #1 Album for Song Parodist 'Weird Al' Yankovic on Billboard 200 Chart in 30 Year Career
Popular song parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic could not believe it. After 30 years in a career spent making parody versions of popular music, he earned his first No. 1 album spot on the Billboard 200 chart with his latest album "Mandatory Fun".
According to Billboard, "Mandatory Fun" became the first comedy set to top the chart since 1963, and it had the largest sales week for a comedy album since 1994.
If you’d told me 30 years ago this would happen, I never would’ve believed it. If you’d told me 2 WEEKS ago, I never would’ve believed it.
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Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.And the news surprised 54-year-old Yankovic. On Wednesday, he took to Twitter to express his surprise and thanks to his more than three million followers.
"It's official. MANDATORY FUN enters the Billboard album chart this week at #1. Wow. WOW," he first tweeted about the album.
"If you'd told me 30 years ago this would happen, I never would've believed it. If you'd told me 2 WEEKS ago, I never would've believed it," he added in another tweet.
"I'm so pleased everybody is enjoying the album, and I'm enormously grateful for everyone's support. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU," he noted.
According to The New York Times, Yankovic's success stemmed from the marrying of his late 1970s musical approach with modern online marketing videos financed by popular websites like Nerdist, Funny or Die and College Humor and a catchy hashtag, #8videos8days.
The aim was to launch a new video every day for eight days beginning July 14. The first video was "Tacky," a parody of Pharrell Williams's "Happy". He then followed up with others including "Word Crimes" a parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines".
And it paid off big.
Yankovic's Facebook page describes him as "the most successful comedy recording artist of all time, best known for hit song parodies such as 'Amish Paradise,' 'Eat It' and 'White & Nerdy.'"
He is also a three-time Grammy Award winner. His last two albums "Straight Outta Lynwood" (2006) and "Alpocalypse" (2011) both debuted in the Billboard Top Ten.
