Dare to Be Stupid

Weird Al Yankovic

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 12, 1991)
• Original Release Date: 1985
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Volcano
• ASIN: B00000HZYE
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,966 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
A handful of contemporary movies have whimsically looked back at the '80s. Various bands have borrowed from the time period's musical trends with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. But Weird Al was busy sending up that decade while it was still happening. On Dare to Be Stupid, Yankovic parodies, among other things, smash hits by two reigning divas of yore. "Like A Surgeon" turns Madonna's song into an inexperienced doctor's first-person account of his, uh, practice. Weird Al's version of a certain Cyndi Lauper hit proclaims, "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch." In this loony world, the object of desire in "I Want a New Drug" is transformed into a duck. On "Yoda," Yankovic targets the Kinks' early '70s hit, "Lola." Who else but Weird Al would turn a song about sexual identity and confusion into a tune about George Lucas's "wrinkled and green" creature? --Fred Cisterna

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Songs! Great Artist! "Weird Al"'s best, hands down!, December 19, 1999

By A Customer

This CD is awesome! I've never listened to an "Al"-bum with so many songs that appeal to my ear drums. "Like a Surgeon", "Dare to Be Stupid", "I want a new Duck", "One More Minute", "Yoda", "Slime Creatures from Outer Space", "Girls just wanna have Lunch", "This is the Life", "Cable TV, "Hooked on Polkas". . . . they are all awesome! , (if you didn't know, I named all but one song on that CD). It's got some of Al's best parodies, ("Like a Surgeon", "I want a new Duck", "Yoda", and "Girls just wanna have Lunch"), coolest Artist parodies, ("One More Minute" and definately "Dare to be Stupid"), and shows Al's versatility in originals,("Slime Creatures from Outer Space", "This is the Life", and "Cable TV"). "I want a new Duck" is Al's most underrated parody of all time, and should be on his greatest hits CD. "Hooked on Polkas" revolutionized Al into making awesome polka adaptations from several excerpts of hit songs. Even though the title sounds stupid, "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" is one of Al's best originals, with a bunch of kooky sound effects, blues guitar riffs, and hilarious lyrics. "This is the Life" has musical tidbits from all music; Polka, Blues, Heavy Metal, and even a disco twist tossed in for good luck.

"Dare to be Stupid" has to be heard to be believed. Take the risk of buying it before pre-listening, believe me. It's worth every cent.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite Weird Al album, November 13, 2003

By	Daniel J. Hamlow (Narita, Japan) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The reason Dare To Be Stupid is my favourite Weird Al album is that "Like A Surgeon" was the first I heard of him and I remember laughing at the video on MTV. I wouldn't want the guy in the song, an intern who was last in his class, and whose patients have a high mortality rate: "It's a fact, I'm a quack/the disgrace of the AMA/cause my patients die/yeah, my patients die/before they can pay." The way he says "HEY!" after he sings the title really skewers Madonna. EEG beeps are featured that flatline towards the end of the song, immediately after "I can your heart beat/for the very last time."

The title track has a uptempo new wave sound that's almost like a Devo song, but Al sings a laundry list of things one can do to emulate the song. Some are takes on old cliches, "it's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys, it's time to let the bedbugs bite." Others are way sillier, "You better squeeze all the Charmin you can, when Mr. Whipple's not around, stick your head in the microwave and get yourself a tan."

Only Weird Al could take Huey Lewis and the News' "I Want A New Drug" and turn it into "I Want A New Duck." This is not only silly, with Donald Duck-like quacks, but has some groaners for puns, "duck tape", "the duck stops here", and the king of them all, "one that won't smell too foul."

"One More Minute" is a breakup ballad where he sings like Elvis a la "Can't Help Falling In Love". The bitter humour used is like those pain gags used in Inspector Clouseau or Naked Gun comedies: "I'd rather have my blood sucked out by leeches/shove an icepick under a toenail or two/I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue/than spend one more minute with you." There is a hint of innuendo using a clever metaphor: "cause I'm stranded all alone/in the gas station of love/and I have to use the self-service pumps."

"Yoda" is a send-up of the Kinks' "Lola" and here's the first shot at Star Wars Al did years before "The Saga Begins." The Dagobah swamp is described as a place "where it bubbles like a giant carbonated soda" Yoda, yo-yo-yo-yo-Yoda" Catchy, that. Funniest line: "I know Darth Vader's got you really annoyed/but remember if you kill him then you'll be unemployed/oh my Yoda."

The brief "George Of The Jungle" replicates the theme song to the show. "Slime Creatures From Outer Space" features weird space age noises about an invasion from beyond the stars.

I wonder if Al got any dates after singing his Cyndi Lauper's send-up, complete with crunching noises. His funny take on the female metabolic system and how females never like to pay would've gotten him a moratorium on dating: "She eats like she got a hole in her neck and I'm the one that always gets stuck with the check/can't figure out why they don't weight a ton/girls, they wanna have lunch."

I was told that the ragtime/Dixieland jazz of "This Is the Life," about something being so filthy rich, was featured in the Johnny Dangerously movie. Nice guitar solo here.

"Cable TV" is another critique on TV, on the perception that getting more satellite channels and esoteric ones makes one cool, be it watching the stock report in Korean, midget wrestling, Celebrity Hockey, etc. "83 channels of escatasy/I love my cable TV" go the chorus. Here's how it'll it end: "I never want to leave my apartment/cause there's so much for me to see." Is life is so empty that they feel fulfilled doing that?

Finally, "Hooked On Polkas," which is a polka medley of 80's tracks Al does snippets of with accordion accompaniment and silly noises. The medley consists of Pee Wee Hunt's "12th Street Rag", Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger's "State Of Shock", ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man", Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It", Hall and Oates' "Method Of Modern Love", Yes's "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It", Nena's "99 Luftballons", Kenny Loggins' "Footloose", Duran Duran's "The Reflex", Quiet Riot's "Bang Your Head", and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax."

So, bite off more than you can chew, take some wooden nickels, look for Mr. Goodbar, get your mojo working now, you can dare to be stupid.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More songs about television and food, June 23, 2005

By	Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Weird Al"'s third album continues with the pattern he established with his second album. An (almost) equal number of parodies and originals, plus a medley of hit songs done polka style. (Although this album throws in an out-of-leftfield cover version of the "George of the Jungle" theme song.) The parodies: "Like a Surgeon" and "Yoda" are classics, "I Want a New Duck" and "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch" are just average. The originals are all pretty good, with "Dare to Be Stupid" (a Devo style song) and "One More Minute" (a '50s vocal group style song) being absolute classics. Recommended to "Weird Al" fans (you know who you are).