Yesterday, Weird Al post his newest song on Youtube.  It’s a parody of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and according Weird Al it was going to be the lead single and video for his next album.  As I type this, it’s still available for a listen.  Song is called Perform This Way.

Now, if you watch the video you’ll notice it starts off with Al saying that he did not receive Lady Gaga’s approval for the song.  Having been a long time fan of Mr. The Yankovic I was a bit surprised.  Not that someone would say no… I mean I’m surprised when that happens but it does happen.  I was surprised that Al would have made the single if he was told no.  See, historically, Weird Al only makes songs if he can get the okay from the original artist.  Technically he could make it without those rights, but he’s the kind of class act that refuses to abuse another artists work without their consent.

Fortunately, I didn’t  have to wait to long to find out the deal.  An hour or so later Weird Al made a tweet linking to his blog and explaining the long and short of what happened.   You can read it all here, but I’ll give you a summary.  Apparently, when Al made his original request he was told that Lady Gaga had to HEAR the song before she’d give her okay.  Odd, but he went ahead and got his band together and spent a few days recording, editing, and mixing the final product for her.  Then, she said “no.”

Needless to say Al was frustrated, and didn’t like jumping through hoops only to be denied.  He decided he wouldn’t put the single on the album, but since he had to make the song at all to get made the choice to share it with his fans.  His intent was to make it available to download for free on his site later this week.

Now, whether it was a result of his tweets or his fans complaining or what I’m not sure.  But late in the day (Wed) he tweeted an update to his earlier blog post.  In this new post he explained that Lady Gaga contacted him with her approval after all.  Seems she’d never even heard his original request, found the parody hilarious, and was honored he’s spoof her.  That sounds more like the typical response when Weird Al offers to parody an artist.  The story behind the story seems to be that Gaga’s manager never even passed Weird Al’s request along to her and just made a decision on his own.  Not the first time I’ve heard of a manager doing that kind of thing, so I’ll give Gaga the benefit of the doubt and accept that tale.

So, now the single is set, there will be a video as well, and the best news of all is that Weird Al can finalize the date for his next album release!!  That’s great news if you’re a fan (which I am!)   When I hear more news about the album or the video I’ll make sure to pass it along.

** UPDATE **

Weird Al just announced his new album titled Alpocalypse will release June 21, 2011.