College students and music lovers can study “Like a Surgeon” with a one-of-a-kind course on legendary musician ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.
This fall, Vermont State University Lyndon’s Music and Performing Arts Professor Brian Warwick will be offering the ‘Weird Al’ class — a business course inspired by Harvard University’s own class on Taylor Swift.
Yankovic, with his infectious personality and pop-music spoofs that have inspired and entertained generations, is worthy of study, he said.
“Al Yankovic‘s work is not just about the parodies. It’s also about his tribute or pastiche songs, where it’s actually an original work by Al Yankovic, but he’s paying tribute to another artist,” Warwick, who has worked with Yankovic in the past and considers him a friend, told WCAX.
The class will be a deep dive into Yankovic’s iconic parodies — like “Eat It,” “Like a Surgeon” and “Smells like Nirvana” — and how the five-time Grammy winner rose to the top of the music industry.
Warwick said students will analyze what makes a good parody, learn how to pay homage to other artists and learn about the social context when Yankovic skyrocketed to fame in the 1980s and 1990s.
“It just gives us an avenue to start studying the 20th century and pop culture in the 20th century,” Warwick told the outlet.
Alfred Matthew Yankovic, better known as Weird Al, released his first parody “My Bologna” — a play on the Knacks’ “My Sharona” — in 1979 before his debut album exploded in 1983.
Over the last four decades, the fun-loving accordion player has been nominated for 11 Grammy awards, of which he won five, and has released more than 150 songs.
In 2022, he released his second satirical biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as a young Yankovic.
“It’s really impressive to me that he can take these big productions that cost so much money to make and, and yeah, make these parodies and make them sound like parodies while really keeping the integrity of the song,” Miles Haimovitch, a VTSU Lyndon Junior said..
The VTSU course will be open to all who sign up, not just students.
