Recently, “Weird Al” Yankovic released a new polka medley online to commemorate the ten years (!) that have passed since his last studio album, Mandatory Fun. Since “Weird Al” in 3-D, medleys of current popular songs in polka form have been a feature of each album and something of a signature for the artist. Yankovic has continued to be active since Mandatory Fun, touring, making one-off appearances with other artists, and producing his “biographical” film, Weird, but the new medley, titled “Polkamania!”, was a good answer to the question, “Does Al still have it?” in an era when social media-native novelty artists like Nick Lutsko and Tom Cardy are dominating YouTube.

When I started this blog and called it “Medleyana,” Yankovic’s polka medleys were one of my inspirations, but I never ended up writing much about them except in a general way. I was fascinated by the mechanics of joining together disparate compositions such that they sound like they belong together (at least when Yankovic wasn’t deliberately emphasizing the contrasts between different styles and subject matters). What began as a one-off joke (who even remembers Stars on 45, the studio medleyists Yankovic was originally parodying?) was sustained by the wit and musicianship Yankovic and his band brought to the concept. Having outlived many of the artists he built his career on parodying, it’s not unrealistic to think of Yankovic as a Haydn or Mozart of pop music, supporting the broad, entertaining strokes of his output with a foundation of craft and attention to detail. (While we don’t usually think of Yankovic as a subtle humorist, his original songs written in the style of other artists can be seen as the mirror image of the polka medleys, in which he puts his own stylistic stamp on a broad range of music.)

The delivery of a new medley every few years turned into a “state of popular music” time capsule as he continued the pattern over decades. Almost as soon as “Polkamania!” appeared last week, it was followed by commentary videos cataloging the original songs and by edits incorporating the original vocals or music videos, so clearly there is a following for these that goes beyond affection or loyalty to Yankovic himself.

With a few exceptions, most of Yankovic’s medleys incorporate hit songs (either songs that became chart-toppers or widespread memes, but were somehow inescapable) from the few years since the previous one. “Polkamania!” covers a wider gap of ten years but otherwise follows the same format. Every song referenced has been huge, whether it’s Adele’s “Hello,” “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto, or Cardi B’s “WAP.” It ends with a song by the current biggest artist in the world, “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift. In addition to the adaptation to polka instrumentation (accordion, of course, but also clarinet and/or trumpet, tuba or electric bass, banjo, and a near-constant off-the-beat snare drum pattern), stereotyped polka riffs form the intro and outro as well as interludes between some of the song quotations. (Notably, each medley ends in almost the exact same way, with the final song expanded into a showy farewell chorus with a “shave and a haircut” from the band.)

The humor in this and the other medleys often comes from the contrast between the original songs’ sense of cool, danger, and/or emotional earnestness and the uncool, frantic pace of a polka (not to mention the yodeling). From his nickname on down, “Weird Al” Yankovic has made a virtue out of embracing and embodying the hopelessly dorky, turning a song about lusting after an underage girl into a song about bologna, “Like a Virgin” into “Like a Surgeon,” et cetera. Since Yankovic sings the majority of the vocals in the polka medleys, his exuberantly goofy voice is also front and center; it’s like having your dad sing along when you’re trying to look cool. Sometimes Yankovic leans fully into his Jerry Lewis persona (like his shoutout to the “sexy ladies” of “Gangnam Style” in an earlier medley); his take on the unimpressed, understated “duh” that punctuates Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” is so broad you can practically hear the drool. How could he be expected to resist bait like that? On the same spectrum is his replacement of swear words with broadcast-acceptable substitutes, turning “a god-damn vampire” into “a gosh-darn vampire,” or sound effects. A friend of mine pointed out how much Yankovic’s humor relies on laundering some pretty dark humor for younger listeners, much like MAD Magazine did when I was a kid, so while it is easy to roll your eyes at some of these choices, you have to admit Yankovic knows his audience.

Having said that, the medleys often also work alchemy on the original songs, revealing interesting qualities that aren’t only funny. Ballads sound especially colorful when sped up and locked into rigid time. (This goes back to Spike Jones, who burlesqued Henry Mancini’s “Laura” by playing it as a galop, among other musical transformations.) Also, not all the songs are separated by interludes, with Yankovic instead juxtaposing lyrics to make one song “answer” or flow into another as if they were in conversation. Constructing a medley is like being a DJ, leading from song to song and overlapping them to decide just how much of a break the audience should hear between them. In the early ‘00s, when the charts were dominated by hip-hop without much underlying harmony, Yankovic’s arrangements often invented accompaniments out of whole cloth, and the polka-style countermelodies sometimes also bridge more than one song.

From the beginning, Yankovic also broke up the tempo, slowing down for the middle part of the medley, which is probably necessary for variety but is sometimes more effective than others. In “Polkamania!”, the slowdown occurs for Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” but there is another disjunct moment introducing “WAP;” and changes in tempo lead into “Uptown Funk” and “Shake It Off,” so the cumulative effect is of separating the songs into discrete sections rather than feeling like one leads into another. For that reason, while I like parts of “Polkamania!” I don’t consider it the strongest in its overall shape.

I’ve always enjoyed listening to these medleys for their own sake, even when I wasn’t as familiar with the original songs (I know, saying “I like Weird Al’s version better than the original” or “I only know Weird Al’s version of the song” is a cliché, but I guess sometimes it’s true). The amount of attention and scrutiny they get from his audience shows that the musicality continues to engage after the jokes have become familiar.

Now, since this is something I’ve toyed with doing for a long time, and I probably won’t get a good opportunity for another ten years, my personal ranking of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s polka medleys, from least to most favorite. Like all my ratings, it is subject to change at any time. After ten years of blogging, I’ve learned the hard way that no link is forever, but all of these can be found on YouTube, Spotify, et cetera, or maybe you just own all of these already. (“Bohemian Polka,” from 1993’s Alapalooza, while stylistically similar to the medleys, is a polka cover of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” so I’m not including it. But I don’t like it and never listen to it anyway.)

13. “The Hamilton Polka” (2018): Some of this kind of works, but overall feels like one established cultural icon welcoming another. No thanks.

Favorite song (in the context of the medley, that is): Gun to my head, “Washington on Your Side”

12. “The Hot Rocks Polka” from UHF Original Soundtrack (1989): An outlier, in that every song in this medley is from the same artist. I’m not a huge Rolling Stones fan, but Yankovic gets as much contrast from the different songs in their catalog as he can. He himself is the anti-Jagger here, draining the cool from these songs in the name of humor. It’s effective, I guess, but I never listen to this one.

Favorite Song: The interlude after “Brown Sugar” is pretty good.

11. “Hooked on Polkas” from Dare to Be Stupid (1985): Solid. Hooked on Classics was a popular medley series, putting famous classical excerpts to a disco beat, so it’s another logical title to riff on. Yankovic does more silly voices on this one (“What’s Love Got to Do with It?,” “The Reflex”), but it has good momentum.

Favorite Song: “Relax”

10. “Polka Party” from Polka Party! (1986): Notable for its constant tempo, there’s no central slower section in this one. The arrangements are getting a little more ambitious.

Favorite Song: “Sussudio,” mostly because of the little accordion riff that answers the chorus 

9. “Polkarama!” from Straight Outta Lynwood (2006): This one’s kind of hard to place. The arrangement is quite good, but overall I don’t like it as much as its contemporaries.

Favorite Song: “Speed of Sound”

8. “Polka Your Eyes Out” from Off the Deep End (1992): This one isn’t my favorite, but it might be the most “Weird Al” of the medleys, the one you could play to show just what this guy is all about. It includes the “drum solo” that has become a staple of Yankovic’s live shows, and I can’t think of “Ice Ice Baby” without recalling the chipper way he says “Word to your mother!” It’s is also a good example of the time capsule effect and shows how dependent the medleys are on the current pop music landscape, as it’s an uneasy mix of Top 40 rock (Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”), hip-hop (“The Humpty Dance” was practically a novelty song in itself), and the incoming college rock/alternative wave (Nirvana is parodied by the album cover and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was parodied as “Smells Like Nirvana,” but the B-52s and R.E.M., representing an older generation of alternative artists who had hits at this time, are represented with “Love Shack” and “Losing My Religion,” respectively).

Favorite Song: “Enter Sandman”

7. “NOW That’s What I Call Polka!” From Mandatory Fun (2014): Again, there’s a lot to like in this one, but it feels a bit repetitive, as if it spends a little too much time with each song before moving on. I haven’t quantified that or anything, but it does feel like the energy and invention are flagging compared to the earlier medleys. 

Favorite Song: “Thrift Shop”

6. “Polkamania!” (2024) Solid, with the caveats about tempo changes dragging down the momentum, and as with “NOW That’s What I Call Polka!”, some of the songs wear out their welcome, but it’s fun.

Favorite Song: “Vampire”

5. “Polkas on 45” from “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D (1984): As mentioned, this is the one that started it all, parodying the then-popular Stars on 45, an act that had topped the charts briefly with studio-recorded medleys of just the good/recognizable bits of pop hits from previous decades. As such, this includes songs from a wider timespan than most of Yankovic’s other medleys, bringing together current New Wave hits like Devo’s “Jocko Homo” and Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” with classic rock including the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It’s fast, funny (including a Lawrence Welk-style “champagne music” interlude, complete with bubbles), and it still holds up.

Favorite song: “Smoke on the Water” segueing into “Sex (I’m A . . .)”

4. “Angry White Boy Polka” from Poodle Hat (2003): Solid, a great sense of transitions. 

Favorite Song: “The Real Slim Shady”

3. “The Alternative Polka” from Bad Hair Day (1996): One of my favorites, really fires on all cylinders and gets a lot of mileage from the interesting chord progressions of this era of songwriting. The opening guitar riff from Beck’s “Loser” segueing into a polka makes for a terrific intro. Yankovic’s at the height of his powers as an arranger and performer.

Favorite Song: “Black Hole Sun”

2. “Polka Power!” From Running with Scissors (1999): This is another favorite, with a great sense of momentum. Hard to decide between this one and “The Alternative Polka.”

Favorite Song: The entire end section from “MMMBop” through “Sex and Candy” and “Closing Time”

1. “Polka Face” from Alpocalypse (2011): My favorite, using Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” as a frame, starting and ending with it; great transitions, as from “Need You Now” into “Baby.”

Favorite Song: Other than “Poker Face,” “TiK ToK” is used to great effect.