"Weird Al" Yankovic has a new album. I've long grown out of an interest in parody for parody's sake, and indeed I'm too far removed from pop music to enjoy it anyway. I have to wonder if Al has lost interest in pop music with age as have his aging fans; the time between the release of a song and the release of Al's parody seems to have grown with each album, as if Al doesn't listen to the radio any more either. But a Ben Folds track (with Folds on piano) and a Dylan tribute with palindromic lyrics are enough to pique my interest.
I don't know if it says more about Yankovic's waning fan base or the music industry in general that I would not have known of this new album were it not for a mail-order ad on television.
This new album was put together over the last few years, and it shows. The "E-Bay" song, for example, would have been much funnier if it had come out when eBay was just hitting the national consciousness, say in 1999.