Sam Anderson has a wonderful profile of Weird Al in The New York Times Magazine. I read through it all this morning, and when Yankovic talks about his writing process, it really jumped out at me:
But it turns out that Weird Al approaches the composition of his music with something like the holy passion of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Looking through the “White & Nerdy” file felt like watching a supercomputer crunch through possible chess moves. Every single variable had to be considered, in every single line. The song begins with a simple sentence — “They see me mowing my front lawn” — and even here Yankovic agonized over “lawn” versus “yard” and “my” versus “the.” He sifted through phrases in gradations so small, they were almost invisible:
Escher’s really still my favorite MC.
Tell ya Escher’s still my favorite MC.
Escher is my favorite MC.
Escher’s still my favorite MC.
MC Escher’s still my favorite MC.
MC Escher is my favorite MC.
Y’know Escher is my favorite MC.
Y’know Escher’s still my favorite MC.For weeks at a time, Yankovic told me, he goes into a creative trance — what he calls “the zombie phase.” “I walk around the house with a thousand-mile stare,” he said. “My wife asks if I’m OK.”
This attention to detail clearly pays off in Weird Al’s music, and is something I’d love to be able to do in my writing, but rarely get to do.
So why does he work this way? The answer speaks volumes about how the musician thinks about projects:
“I could have written a whole second ‘White & Nerdy’ based on the alt lines,” Yankovic said. “I figure I’m going to be living with this song for a long time. We’ll probably be doing it onstage for the rest of my life. It’s got to be right.”