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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

"Weird Al" Yankovic's 'Mandatory Fun' tops chart

"Weird Al" Yankovic's 14th studio album, Mandatory Fun, has just debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, Digital Albums and Comedy charts, selling just under 104,000 units in its first week.

This marks a personal first week sales best and first #1 album debut for Yankovic (pictured left, in the video for "Sports Song," alongside Riverside City College's Marching Tigers). The last time a comedy album topped the Billboard chart was 51 years ago, with Allan Sherman's 1963 release My Son, the Nut. It is also the largest sales week for a comedy album since 1994.

On Spotify, Yankovic sets the U.S. record for having the most tracks from one album in the viral top 10 at one time taking the first 4 spots. Additionally, Al saw an increase of 785% in streams across all his albums totaling 3.2 million streams including 2.1 million streams of Mandatory Fun. Yankovic topped Spotify's Viral chart globally.

Last Monday, Yankovic kicked off a week of promotion with the release of the first of 8 videos in 8 days. They have totaled over 46 million views combined. Yankovic teamed up with various production partners such as Nerdist Industries, CollegeHumor, Yahoo (Principato-Young Entertainment), Funny or Die and TruScribe, as well as talented auteurs like Liam Lynch, Jarrett Heather and Tim Thompson.

The RCA Records album features parodies of some of the biggest hits of the past year, including Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” (“Tacky”), Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” (“Word Crimes”), Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” (“Handy”), Lorde’s “Royals” (“Foil”) and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” (“Inactive”), plus several originals and pastiches (“Lame Claim to Fame,” “Sports Song,” “My Own Eyes,” “Mission Statement,” “First World Problems” and “Jackson Park Express”) along with Al’s latest accordion-fueled medley, “NOW That’s What I Call Polka!" 


Yankovic is the biggest-selling comedy recording artist in history with over 12 million albums sold. Now in his fourth career decade, he has released 14 studio albums, won 3 Grammys (with 14 nominations) as well as awards for his songs "White & Nerdy," "Eat It," "Like a Surgeon," "Fat," "Smells Like Nirvana," "Amish Paradise," "The Saga Begins" and others.

Mandatory Fun Track listing:

1. Handy
2. Lame Claim to Fame
3. Foil
4. Sports Song
5. Word Crimes
6. My Own Eyes
7. NOW That's What I Call Polka!
8. Mission Statement
9. Inactive
10. First World Problems
11. Tacky
12. Jackson Park Express

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