After a campaign of goofy brilliance, master parodist Weird Al Yankovic has catapulted his latest album to the top of the chart in its debut week. Mandatory Fun is Yankovic’s first number one album after nearly three decades of output. This is the last album in the three-time Grammy award winner’s contract with RCA records and the first comedy set to top the list since Allan Sherman’s “My Son, the Nut” back in 1963.
The record’s success is no doubt due in large part to Yankovic’s #8days8videos daily viral music video campaign that began with the parody of Pharrell’s “Happy.” The campaign supported the album in its meteoric rise to the top, far surpassing forecasts with 104,000 copies sold in the six days after its July 14 release. The eight hilarious videos parody recent hits with campy reinterpretations of Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” and Lorde’s “Royals”, renamed “Handy” and “Foils” among others, that poke fun at pop culture in colorful lyrics and videos.
This morning, Yankovic tweeted his surprised delight at the success of Mandatory Fun, saying “wow. WOW.” and “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.” This is Yankovic’s third album to reach the top ten on the charts after Straight Outta Lynwood back in 2006 and his last album, Apocalypse released in 2011.
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