Fun fact: In the scene where the T-Rex comes towards the crew members, Steven Spielberg was originally going to be crushed. But because he was such a good sport about Al using the "Jurassic Park" property for the parody, Al decided to spare him.
Oh yeah. Doing a workable parody of a song that was voted the "worst song ever made"? And having it actually turn out as one of his best songs? (I mean, that's a long list, but still.) Yeah. Genius.
I don't know why McArthur Park was voted one of the worst songs ever made. Sure some of the lyrics are either kind of corny or silly, but it's a hell of a lot more creative than 90% of pop music today.
The whole: "I'm afraid those things will harm me, 'cause they sure don't act like Barney amd they think that I'm their dinner not their friend..." Is probably my favorites part of the song. It's absolutely brilliant in my opinion.
Funny you mention that, I just finished watching the "I Love You, You Hate Me" documentary on Peacock, which is pretty much the whole history of Barney and how GenXers made hating Barney a trend.
@@danielaldana818 I saw that documentary, and it pretty much misses the point that most of the GenXers who did this were only doing this for the purpose of satire and would not hurt anyone involved with Barney or his show.
Al would play this video during his concerts while making a costume change (into the Fat suit, as I recall). There would be a tremendous roar of approval from the audience when Barney got his stupid purple head bitten off.
So check this out...Autotune wasn't a thing until 1997. This was recorded in 1993. Al hit those big long notes FOR REAL! And those last two after the key change are legitimately impressive.
@@aycc-nbh7289 correct, pitch correction has been around for a very long time and pretty much all vocalists have it done on recorded songs at some point or another
Believe me... I have heard longer notes held by people who do live musical theater, but tha doesnt mean Weird Al is a bad musician/singer... FAR FROM IT! He is definitely someone who can more than likely carry a long note like a broadway actor, after all he's a musician with a butt ton of energy and that requires some lung power to even hit notes like that!
Another fun fact: this song was an Easter egg for a brief moment during the seen that involved a radio. Another song that was an Easter egg in that scene was the 1987 duck tales theme song.
Don't mean to rain on your fun fact parade, dear, but you positive that wasn't just a joke from Nostalgia Critic? Could'a sworn he did something like that for his Lost World review... Eh, maybe it was just a fever dream, wouldn't be the first time...
Thirty years later and this song still randomly gets stuck in my head. For DAYS! He's actually pretty damned good when he writes his own melodies and arrangements. The break down sounds very Zappa-esque.
He didn't write the tune, it's a parody of "MacArthur Park". The original has the same arrangement and breakdown you're talking about. But yes "Genius in France" is an original pastiche of Zappa
@@theheathbar123 Oh, yea, I learned about MacArthur Park eventually. I definitely hadn't heard that song in the 5th grade, when I was rocking this cassette! "Dare To Be Stupid" is another pastiche of Oh No-era DEVO that's pretty right on.
This may be my favorite Al parody because it marries the bizzare specificity of this song with the specifics of the weird plot of Jurrassic park. It's just done so well.
This popped into my head after hearing MacArthur Park on the radio just now; haven’t heard this song since I was a kid (I’m 41) and it still rocks! Absolute genius!
Wow, it's amazing listening to this again after hearing Richard Harris' original and seeing how Al was able to take and fashion a parody from McArthur Park's bizarre lyrics and center it around one of the biggest hit movies of that year. Awesome stuff!!!!
@@resplndnt yes it is! It's about loosing the love of one's life that never fully was, to neglect, immaturity, and circumstances out of one's control. An epic tragedy in the context of this song!
@@resplndnt the song has deeper undertones too, as the writer had not only lost his lover but also his mother who had been almost his sole support as a budding songwriter. And it is about societal loss and change, as the actual MacArthur Park in Los Angeles where this songs theme had actually taken place for the songwriter, which had been beautiful only a few years before, back when they were still seeing each other, had recently started to go rapedly downhill and become dangerous, along with the surounding neighborhoods.
@@JKTube yes, and of course that didn't exactly happen... But Jimmy has finally come to fully, if reluctantly, embrace the profound and beautiful but very sad meanings of the song. He has said that MacArthur Park was very prophetic for him, if partly self fulfilling prophecy including some things that he came to deeply regret in time. But it is life and it was and still is very real to him!
Even with the brilliance of the stop-motion animation, my favorite part is the 2D animation when Al is being swallowed with the T-Rex dancing in different art styles.
Yes, and sung by Richard Harris aka Prof. Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films. Here's the original ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sD-zTwi3_GU.html&app=desktop
LOL... no... it's about a failed relationship the writer, Jimmy Webb had. He stated, "I've also tried to tell the truth, which is that it's just a song about a girlfriend of mine, Susie Horton, and this place on Wilshire Boulevard where we used to have lunch, which is called MacArthur Park. And the truth is that everything in the song was visible. There's nothing in it that's fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it's a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park". But your interpretation is hysterical.
False. They did everything they could to coax him to eat them, and he still couldn't be cajoled to do so until the end of each season, persuaded by the threat they'd bring the same kids back if he didn't eat them.
17 year old fan from England here, this was my introduction to Weird Al as I love all things Jurassic Park. The original goes hard, too, and I'm not a big fan of Nirvana, so I haven't heard it till recently this year.
Yeah, went to Jurassic Park 2 years ago. My cousin and my boyfriend were both mauled and eaten by Velociraptors and I was stepped on by a Brachiosaurus, leaving me in a coma for 6 months and completely paralyzed from the waist down. Don't worry though. I left a scathing review on Yelp.
The attention to detail when the T-Rex is waving at the end and gets tired of waving and uses its other arm to hold the tiring waving arm up attention to that detail that's incredible
Ive been playing a game with my younger brother for about 15 years where if one of us sings the beginning of the chorus and the other doesn’t finish it we get to give the loser a punch on the shoulder. We can go years without bringing it up but its always fun when it happens. Also i love this song
I can't believe that Al is basically a god here. He can live with only 1/4 of his body, and somehow found a way to get out of that T-rex without being digested.
I honestly thought there was 2 different parodies of this song. I thought the weird thing with the cake out in the rain was a parody too, I had no idea it was the original song. Talk about a weird freaking song. This version is hilarious, and actually makes sense!
It was also great in the original, when the velociraptor was on top of the stainless food-prep counter, and tapped his claw while he was figuring out where lunch was hiding.
More like pcp and lsd with a fuck ton of xans this dude saw dinosaurs barney was in clay saw himself in the third person saw cartoons and cage stripper dancing dinos and a mutant hybrid energizer bunny he had to have been high as fuck
my mom came to my apartment recently (and this was, of course, waaay past when the movie was popular); then seriously and angrily said that my living room, "looks like Newman's desk from that dinosaur movie. I feel like that black guy did; i just wanna shove everything off the tables..."
My favorite part is when he's singing "Oh, noooooo..." and the dinosaur picks up his foot and there he is - Mr. Bill!! Oh, no, Mr. Bill!!! SNL from the 70s, the best decade in its history.
There's a line "Well this sure ain't no E-ticket, and I'll tell them where to stick it" For those who don't know or remember, back in the 60's and 70's Disneyland sold tickets for the rides. They came as A, B, C, D and E, if I remember right the A tickets were the cheapest and the E tickets were the most expensive. The others wee somewhere in between. When you wanted to go on a ride, you had to buy the correct ticket for that ride. At the gates, you might buy 10 A tickets, 5 B tickets, 8 C tickets etc.You then went looking for the rides you could go on depending on what tickets you had left.
I had a vague knowledge that an E-ticket meant something pretty good and ritzy, but I didn't really know the backstory behind the definition. Thanks for teaching an '81 kid.
Honestly, one of my favorite Weird Al songs. It explains the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, the lyrics are hilarious and the music is absolutely beautiful. Great work.
Am I the only one who think the music for this actually fits Al's lyrics better than the original concept? To me it actually sounds more like some kind of epic struggle to stay alive than mourning a breakup.
@@doubleflores8350 The song that this is based on, which is a metaphor about a breakup: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sD-zTwi3_GU.html
This never fails to crack me up. Hilarious! Love the animations and the lyrics. The whole thing is very clever. I love the part where the t-Rex drinks a cup of tea and flosses his fangs after devouring the lawyer
This is classic Weird Al, it's inventive and funny visually and in the lyrics. This is so darn funny, you find something new to laugh at every time, I just never get tired of watching it.
Kinda surprised that nobody is calling attention to A GODDAMN TYRANNOSAURUS ELBOW DROPPING AN IGUANODON with the WWF logo in the fence/turnbuckle...'cause that's like the most awesome thing ever put to film right there folks!
Giggling to myself remembering the bemused faces of the audience that time I went up to sing “MacArthur Park“ at our local college karaoke and instead busted out the Weird Al lyrics.
I like how briefly they show a chicken amongst the dinosaurs, giving nod to the fact that chickens (and birds in general) are themselves dinosaurs. Not just hilarious but genius!
Not comdey not comedy butt parody yes I really don't think you can put king of comedy on any stand up for any person or off on the in their own way and I watch a lot of stand-up but I get what you mean he is the king of parody songs is the best out of everybody that doesn't it
From the perspective of a dieing man, i guess so, because im asuming if he wasn't dead already the hydrologic acid in the stomach would kill him pretty quickly.
If there really were T-shirts that (just as a joke) said "I was eaten alive at Jurassic Park" for sale, I would certainly go ahead & buy 1 if the price was decent.
this parody is truly brilliant because you can feel the respect and admiration Yankovic has for the original song as he simultaneously created the best possible arrangement for it while making his parody a tie in for a major movie franchise.
