(PCM) Hilarious artist Weird Al Yankovic has been delighting fans for the past weeks, releasing 8 parody videos in promotion of his new album, Mandatory Fun, and it looks like all the marketing has paid off!
Mandatory Fun, Weird Al’s fourteenth studio album, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 making it the first number one record of artist’s 38-year long career.
Mandatory Fun sold over 104,000 units in its first week according to Nielsen SoundScan, doubling the sales of Weird Al’s previous studio album, Alpocalypse, during its first week.
Weird Al celebrated by tweeting the announcement to his 3.32 million twitter followers:
It’s official. MANDATORY FUN enters the Billboard album chart this week at #1. Wow. WOW.
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 23, 2014
The album is also the first comedy album since 1963 to reach number 1 on the Billboard 200; Alan Sherman was the last comedian/parody artist to hold the title with his album My Son, the Nut.
Mandatory Fun includes tracks that parody recent hits by artists Robin Thicke, Imagine Dragons, Lorde, Iggy Azalea, and Pharrell as well as a few original tracks in the stylings of Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Pixies, and Foo Fighters.
The album, along with great sales, has received positive critical responses; the Los Angeles Times praised the album as “a stone cold masterpiece…parodying hit songs to create gut-busting laughter.”
Watch the video for “Word Crimes,” one of the videos released in the 8 days leading up to Mandatory Fun’s release that already has over 10 million views on YouTube, below and check out Weird Al’s official site here.
Also, PCM’s Danger Man, Lars Hindsley, interviewed the designer/animator for the Word Crimes video – Jarrett Heather, Check it out here.
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