Polka Face: Let's Help "Weird Al" Yankovic Write His Lady Gaga Parody

Profoundly disturbing image by Camille Dodero

​Today, Billboard reported that everyone's favorite accordion-playing pop-culture parodist, "Weird Al" Yankovic, is nine songs deep into his follow-up to 2006's Straight Outta Lynwood, and is possibly seeking inspiration from the current queen of the pop charts. We're no slouches when it comes to Lady Gaga fandom or horrifying puns as song titles, so we thought we'd help Al through his creative process a bit.  We're still working on turning "Alejandro" into "Don't Tase Me, Bro," but for the time being, here are our three best submissions.

"Cookie Monster" 
This one's simple enough. Few lyrical concessions need be made ("ME EAT YOUR HEART," for instance), and we're sure Al could easily mock up that legendary growl, which would work as a duet with a female counterpart (also voiced by Al). In true Gaga fashion, the video treatment would be the real art, and the most pure homage to Sesame Street's noted gastronome. The show's concrete-wall conversation spot is the setting for Cookie Monster's notorious ingestion process to be reimagined as fashionably grotesque. Al/Gaga (also a puppet) looks on in frozen terror as Cookie, in slow motion, forces blood-red heart-shaped cookies down his throat, leaving sticky corn syrup blood to congeal around his mouth, turning his fur a ghastly purple. There's a twist ending, however, as Al/Gaga sneaks off for a second, only to return in this hellish high-fashion getup, dramatically revealing that her hungry counterpart isn't the only killer present.

"Pavarotti"
Gaga's conflicted ode to the perils of mega-fame offers the perfect opportunity to big-up the recently deceased superstar Italian tenor. The chorus could easily go operatic; the video could see Al dust off the "Fat" suit, slap on a beard and a tux, and be tailed by a gaggle of opera fans (carrying actual opera fans) through the streets of Milan (this is not out of the realm of imagination). A series of comic vignettes transpires, culminating in Pavarotti leading them onstage at La Scala, at which point the climactic dance sequence begins.

"Telegram"
Along the lines of "Amish Paradise" (naturally), Al reimagines Gaga's dancefloor-triggered call screening as a '20s housewife, peeking out of the curtains and trying to avoid the Western Union man. "Stop knocking/Stop knocking/I can see you there at the door/Someone probably died that's the only reason you come for," perhaps. Al could also run wild substituting the robotic clicking of a Morse telegraph transmission for the staccato "eh-eh-eh" of "Telephone"s chorus, and there must be plenty of wonderful things that the effective incorporation of the word "STOP" can do to a sung verse in modern dance music.

Thanks to Tommy Craggs, Camille Dodero, and Christopher R. Weingarten.