Weird Al in “Fat” suit/ David A. Smith/Getty ImagesThe fallout from the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland –– which focuses on two men who claim Michael Jackson molested them as children — has had far-reaching consequences. Case in point: “Weird Al” Yankovic has stopped performing two of his most popular parodies in concert because they’re based on MJ songs.
Billboard reports that the Grammy-winning comedy star has dropped both “Eat It” and “Fat” — parodies of “Beat It” and “Bad,” respectively — from his set list on his current Strings Attached tour.
“I don’t know if that’s going to be permanent or not,” Yankovic tells Billboard, “but we just felt that with what’s happened recently with the HBO documentaries, we didn’t want anybody to feel uncomfortable.”
“I felt I had enough fan favorites in the show that I could get away with it,” he added. “I haven’t gotten a lot of pushback; there have been some people who have expressed disappointment, but we decided to err on the side of not offending people.”
Meanwhile, even though they’re what made him famous, Al says these days, he doesn’t write parody songs as often as he used to.
“I’ll get back into it at some point,” he says. “Every now and then a song will capture the zeitgeist and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I should do something with this.’ Then I think, ‘Eh, well maybe not.’ I don’t feel compelled to be as obsessed with the Billboard charts as I used to be.”
Guess that means we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for that “Old Town Road” parody.
Weird Al in “Fat” suit/ David A. Smith/Getty ImagesThe fallout from the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland –– which focuses on two men who claim Michael Jackson molested them as children — has had far-reaching consequences. Case in point: “Weird Al” Yankovic has stopped performing two of his most popular parodies in concert because they’re based on MJ songs.