Weird Al’s Magnum Opus (as of 2021)
Weird Al Yankovic has built a career out of singing songs wrong. He’s released hit records for decades, starred in a vastly underrated movie, and even managed to make it cool to play the accordion. (Well… somewhat cool.) He deserves more respect than can ever be bestowed by doing the same thing we all do when listening to the radio: change the lyrics into a joke! What sets him apart is he’s actually good at it — he eschews the simple substitutions my father would make in the car, such as replacing every “heart” in a song with the word “fart,” or replacing every “funk” in a song with the word “fart.”
I grew up with Weird Al, as did many of us. And like everybody else, I have my own choices for personal favorites, such as “Smells Like Nirvana,” “Eat it,” and his greatest accomplishment, “Amish Paradise.” If you’ve read the title of this piece — which you must have if you’ve made it this far. Honestly, I don’t know how you could have clicked the link without reading the title — you know where I’m going with the rest of this article. It’s Weird Al’s magnum opus, his most epic work of all time.
Whether or not you agree with me (you should) the question remains: why? What separates “Amish Paradise” from his other hits? How is it different enough to be singled out with a whole article? Over the course of the next… 1303 words, I’ll dig deep into the song and elaborate on why it’s achieved such a monumental status.
Let’s take a little trip back in time to the mid-90s. A simpler decade when Steve Urkel had his own cereal and nobody knew what an emoji was. A quaint and glorious time. You could turn on the radio box and be soothed by the gentle vibrations of a little song called “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
“Gangsta’s Paradise,” was a ditty by hip-hop artist Coolio, which was featured on the soundtrack of the movie “Dangerous Minds.” It was huge.
Like, really huge.
Urkel huge! (I know what you’re thinking: 2 Urkel jokes in the same article is lazy. Well, you’d be wrong on that, because now it’s up to 3.) “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the biggest song of 1995, according to Billboard, and made Coolio a household name. In fact, it was so big, every radio station played it at some point each day — of course back then, there were only three radio stations anyway: 3, 6, and 10.
To make a tired point, the song was a massive hit.
Now, let’s add Weird Al to the mix, singing a parody version of a hit song as Weird Al is wont to do. Suddenly, the biggest song in the country is sharing air time with its own parody. “Amish Paradise” was also a big hit. Compared to the 3 million copies Coolio’s song sold, the parody sold 1.3 million copies, which turned the album, “Bad Hair Day” into the best-selling album of his career. (So far. As the legend foretells, so long as there is music, Weird Al will always be dropping albums.)
This was an unprecedented situation. Try to imagine how unique this really was. You were an adolescent on the school bus, or the stickball field, or wherever it is adolescents congregate, and those first magical opening beats would start to play. Nobody knew which version it belonged to and, impressively, nobody cared; both songs were equally popular!
But popularity alone is not enough to declare a song a magnum opus. No, there has to be something more to it if you want a free article on the internet to declare you that; it’s a highly coveted title. In “Amish Paradise,” Weird Al delivers big time. He employs a variety of tools and tricks (the nuts and bolts of comedy, if you will (or the glue and paste of laughs, if you dare (or the covalent bonds of yucks, if you want (or the vibrating strings of chuckles, if you say so)))) that elevate it far beyond simple parody.
To truly understand why “Amish Paradise” is so great — and mind you, I’m focusing strictly on the song and ignoring the fantastic music video… for now — it’s necessary to take a look at both versions and compare them alongside one another.
We’ll start with the original.
“Gangsta’s Paradise” is a raw, and at times brutal, rhapsody about life on the streets. It’s rough and it’s uncompromising. If there’s one line at the heart of the entire piece, it would be: “You better watch how you’re talkin’ and where you’re walkin’, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk.”
Simple, evocative, powerful. If you’re not careful, you’re dead.
Compare that to the line at the heart of Weird Al’s version: “Hitchin’ up the buggy, churnin’ lots of butter. Raised a barn on Monday; soon, I’ll raise a-nutter.” As opposed to the rough and dangerous existence described in the original, the parody details a plain and uncomplicated life on a farm. It’s not dangerous, it’s not frightening, it’s just work.
The stark contrast would be funny enough and is certainly in Weird Al’s wheelhouse (“White and Nerdy,” anybody? No? Yes? Hello? Is this thing on?), but here’s where the twist happens:
Despite their obvious differences, the songs are also remarkably similar.
Bold statement, right? I know it is. I felt light-headed just writing it, but it’s true. Allow me to expand that idea.
A current of religion runs through both versions. Coolio’s song begins with a bible verse, “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” which puts us into an immediate mood of cataclysm and danger. The streets here represent the valley of the shadow of death. Incidentally, the only way to survive is through faith. Coolio is basically telling us that the only way to make it through such a rough existence is through a higher power.
Don’t believe me? Consider his line, “I’m the kinda G the little homies wanna be like, on my knees in the night, saying prayers in the streetlight.” This evokes a picture of fear and death being comforted through spirituality; perhaps a predecessor to the quickly rising movement of faith-based hip-hop that has since emerged.
Spirituality is everywhere in the song. Heck, even the beat comes from a sampling of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise,” which is full of religious and spiritual metaphors. This can’t be a coincidence.
And here, we move back to the parody, particularly Weird Al’s companion line to Coolio’s: “I’m the pious guy the little Amlettes wanna be like, on my knees day and night, scoring points for the afterlife.” Although done in the vein of comedy, this also has a message of spirituality and religion, this time as part of the simple Amish lifestyle.
Remarkably, these ideas couldn’t be more dissimilar, yet at the same time, completely alike. A prototypical man of his community is using religion as a key facet of his existence. That’s both versions in a nutshell. What’s more, the songs are constructed in a similar fashion. Descriptions of life on the street/ farm to a society largely unfamiliar with them, while simultaneously embracing the danger/ mundane. It’s almost a paradox within itself, but if there’s anybody who could write a musical paradox, it’s Weird Al.
That’s not to say this is the sole reason “Amish Paradise” was so successful or even why it’s his greatest work. There are other elements that add the proverbial (ha! See what I did there) icing on the cake.
For starters, the comedy never lets up and features a joke for every type of humor. Lines run the gamut from bizarre (“I’ve been milkin’ and plowin’ so long that even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone.”), clever (“Think you’re really righteous, think you’re pure in heart? Well, I know I’m a million times as humble as thou art.”), and even direct parodies from other sources (like when he soulfully sings, “There’s no phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be.” That’s a joke for the 50+ crowd.). No matter your tastes, there’s at least one line that’s bound to make you laugh.
And that’s not all. There’s still another trick Weird Al keeps in his bag which actually elevates this song above the one it’s parodying: the chorus. “Gangsta’s Paradise” features the catchy line “Been spendin’ most their lives living in a gangta’s paradise” two times and switches it to “Been spendin’ most our lives living in a gangsta’s paradise.” Weird Al sees that slight change and says hold my accordion because all his lines are different in the chorus. Each one starts with “Been spendin’ most our lives living in an Amish paradise,” then piles on a different jokes with each subsequent line (My personal favorite: “We’re all crazy Mennonites, living in an Amish paradise.”).
The paradoxical themes, the cornucopia of humor styles, and the bonus jokes delivered in the chorus combine to make this the greatest song Weird Al has ever made. At its purest form, it’s a proper spoofing. But with deeper examination, it shines through the annuls of musical history like a beacon or, more appropriately, a street light.
