On his new album, Even Worse, Weird Al Yankovic steps into his new role as a cellulite hero -- and he expects to take some heat for it. The first single and video is "Fat," which puts broadly comic lyrics about obesity to Michael Jackson's "Bad."
"I'm the king of cellulite," he sings. "I'm gonna need my own zip code."
Yankovic had reservations about doing the song at first, fearing it would offend people the way Randy Newman's "Short People" caused a furor in the late '70s. He went with the track anyway, though he anticiates some people may take offense.
"I'm sure I'm going to get some hate mail for it," he says. "I expect a certain amount of backlash only because there's a lot of people who don't understand that it's good-natured fun."
"People get mad at Randy Newman for doing 'Short People' and that was obviously meant to be a satirical poke at predujice in general. But 'Fat' is done in such a way that people won't be offended beause I make it almost a macho thing. The character in the video is bragging about how fat he is."
Yankovic was almost initially wary about doing another Jackson song, since he is already too closely associated with his "Beat It" parody, "Eat It."
"'Eat It' was something nobody would get offended by," he says "But with a video called 'Fat' you'd get a lot of people on your back."