“Perform This Way” Cleared by Lady Gaga
Weird Al:
Apparently the fact that she didn’t approve it was news to Lady Gaga herself!
Gaga’s manager has now admitted that he never forwarded my parody to Gaga – she had no idea at all. Even though we assumed that Gaga herself was the one making the decision (because, well, that’s what we were TOLD), he apparently made the decision completely on his own.
He’s sorry.
And Gaga loves the song.
So Weird Al’s got a new album coming out:
I wrote and recorded what I thought was going to be the first single off of my new album: a parody of “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga called “Perform This Way.” But after hearing it, Lady Gaga decided not to give me permission to release the song, so… it won’t be coming out commercially anytime in the near future. Sorry.
Al gives a whole breakdown, which is worth reading for a couple reasons:
The man works amazingly fast:
My record company needs 8 weeks of advance notice to confirm an album release date – so in order to be as timely as possible, I almost always have to lock in the date before I’ve even started writing the lead single.
He actually gets permission from each artist for each song:
It has always been my personal policy to get the consent of the original artist before including my parodies on any album.
I mean, going into this I knew Weird Al was a national treasure and insanely talented as a a musician, a lyricist and a comedian. But it also appears that the guy is downright nice as well. Cool.
Fortunately for those of us eager to hear Al’s parody, he’s uploaded it to Youtube.
One more thing. If you have the inclination, donate to the Human Rights Campaign:
I was well aware that “Born This Way” was coming out, and I thought that just might be the pop culture juggernaut I had been waiting for… but after hearing the song, I was reluctant to tackle it. Because it was such an earnest human rights anthem, I thought some people might consider a parody to be in poor taste. […]
But a few weeks later, a parody idea popped into my head […] Based on my concept, I was reasonably sure that my parody wasn’t really going to offend anybody… but I still decided, as an act of good karma, that I would donate all the money from sales of the song and music video to the Human Rights Campaign. […]
A conventional release for the song and video would have also raised a nice chunk of change for the HRC – an organization which I have to assume Gaga supports. Hopefully, if fans enjoy hearing the song online, they’ll make a donation anyway.