Weird Polka Dots Trivia Quiz

Answer:

In case you missed it, all the wrong answers were a play on the titles of Clint Eastwood-associated movies.

By 2025 Weird Al Yankovic was a man who had five Grammy Awards to his name, had created the first comedy album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 (Album) Chart, had collected an Emmy Award and had his own star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. All of this he had built on his innate ability to creatively parody other artists and their biggest hits.

In that same period, he'd created fourteen studio albums, twelve of which have included his, now famous, "Polka Medleys". The only two LPs not to have received this touch were his self-titled debut disc, which he launched in 1983, and his fifth album, 1988's "Even Worse".

Yankovic advised that, despite the first released medley appearing on his second album, "Weird Al Yankovic - In 3-D" (1984), they were not a new creation and that he'd been building them well before he'd even received a recording contract. To stress the point, he added that his first recorded medley, "Polkas on 45", is a significantly different work to the one he'd originally written. "That first version" he said, "contained a lot more punk and new wave material". He debuted the song when he was the opening act for the Missing Persons (band) tour in 1982 and was summarily booed off the stage.

The medleys are made up, for the most part, of popular songs from which he extracts the chorus and/or other memorable lines within the lyrics. Should there be any profanities within those lines, they are promptly masked by cartoon sound effects. The revised, and completed, lyric would then become "polka-rized" using an array of instruments such as the accordion (almost always), banjos, tubas and clarinets.

The songs were never random choices, they were (a) popular numbers and (b) they lent themselves to be parodied. Despite the fact that Al did not need to get the artist's permission, as parody fell under the banner of "fair use", he still did so. In addition, each artist would then be paid a royalty (which was a requirement) and the amount of that royalty would be dependent upon the percentage that could be directly attributed to that artist, with the balance going to Al. To this end there is always an original section in each medley which Al labels the "Ear Booker Polka". That said, permission would not always be granted. For example, Michael Jackson was a great supporter of Al creating "Eat It" (1984), a parody of his 1982 hit "Beat It", but turned down his request to turn "Black or White" (1991) into "Snack All Night" because he felt that it trivialized the message of the original song.

Weird Al has released four medleys as singles, two of which are in the list above and are used to promote the album that they're attached to;
"Hooked on Polkas" from the album "Dare to be Stupid" (1985) and
"Polka Power" from "Running With Scissors" (1999).
The other two, "The Hamilton Polka" (2018) and "Polkamania" (2024), were released as non-album singles.

Whilst the majority of the medleys are built upon various songs by different artists, there have been a couple of exceptions to the rule. The "Hot Rocks Polka", which appears on the LP "UHF - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff" (1989) is built upon the songs of one band... The Rolling Stones. Taking this one step further, the "Bohemian Polka" (album "Alapalooza" - 1993), is founded on a single song... Queen's 1975 hit "Bohemian Rhapsody".