Weird Al Yankovic has finally laughed his way to the top of the charts with his 14th album, Mandatory Fun, more than 30 years after releasing his first.
The project's debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart was bolstered by his #8videos8days stunt, which gave fans eight parody music videos in just as many days across YouTube and other online platforms such as College Humor, Funny or Die and Nerdist.
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Weird Al's social channels heavily promoted links to iTunes and Amazon, where people could buy the album, at one point as cheap as $5.99 on Amazon.
The video stunt, akin to Beyonce's surprise album release that was accompanied by a music video for every song, got off to a strong start with parodies of Pharrell's "Happy," Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," Lorde's "Royals" and Iggy Azalea's "Fancy." The blitz ended with four original songs that parodied styles of music.
If you’d told me 30 years ago this would happen, I never would’ve believed it. If you’d told me 2 WEEKS ago, I never would’ve believed it.
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 23, 2014
I’m so pleased everybody is enjoying the album, and I’m enormously grateful for everyone’s support. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 23, 2014
Weird Al sold 104,000 copies, defeating Jason Mraz's Yes! for the top spot. Meanwhile, on Spotify, Mandatory Fun was streamed nearly 2.2 million times.
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