"Weird Al" Yankovic's Comedy Rock Show Is Bigger, Weirder and Wonderful

Can it get any weirder, and can weird get any better than "Weird Al" Yankovic live?

Weird Al and his eight-piece band brought the nerdy, the naughty and the nonsense at Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie on Saturday, Aug. 2, to a packed crowd full of Hawaiian shirts, mustaches and even some curly-wigged fans. DFW is one of 67 cities on Weird Al’s Bigger and Weirder 2025 tour.

Having decimated a six-year absence from the stage, the Grammy Award-winning, chart-topping pop parody king has a lot to celebrate over the course of his over four-decade career. Yankovic has wins in each of those decades, including his album Mandatory Fun, which just made its 10th anniversary and is the only comedy album to ever debut at the zenith of the Billboard Top 200 chart.

So, what better way to celebrate a confetti-spattering of achievements than with a clown? Before Weird Al made his entrance, his special guest was Puddles Pity Party. With a surprisingly powerful voice for a guy dressed in white-face depressed clown, Puddles is wildly entertaining, combining props, audience participation and a gorgeous voice. He also apparently has an unhealthy level of love for Kevin Costner as featured in the movie montage on the video wall while he sang, “My Heart Will Go On.” It was cinematic and ironic and so thorough that we began to wonder if we had previously underestimated Costner’s star power.

After a brief intermission, the big band brewed some tunes while Weird Al appeared on the screen singing and strolling backstage, SNL style, through an entire song until he came into the audience through a side door and celebrated his way to the stage.

Early on in the set, the energy was high, kicking off with a performance of one of his newer songs, “Polkamania!,” a pop smash up casserole starting with Billie Eilish, moving into Miley Cyrus and finishing strong with Taylor Swift in a song just released last year. Stretching today’s hits into comedy has been Weird Al’s quirk since 1979. He released “My Bologna” not long after, poking fun at the earworm, “My Sharona.” He took that delicious processed meat sensation and shoved it straight into recording his first album, a self-titled collection in 1983. Yankovic did include many of his vintage hits or pieces of them in smashups earlier on in the set, with a stagehand making regular appearances to add props and wardrobe with the song changes. The flickering and flashing of video clips in such rapid fire did feel reminiscent of UHF, which just reached its 35th anniversary. After blasting through the '80s pieces, the entire group had another costume change, re-emerging as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and his dark cheerleaders from “Smells Like Nirvana.”

Yankovic made a point to include some recent trailblazing tunes like “Ebay” about all his funny finds online, and “Word Crimes,” his more intelligent and improved rendition of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” There are a few other songwriters who would dare to use the word nomenclature in their lyrical blasts.
Between songs, the video wall blasted clips from Yankovic’s extensive career, everything from snippets from The Simpsons, fake celebrity interviews and his own comedy skits. Just enough time to recreate themselves, the entire ensemble transformed alongside Weird Al to recreate all his biggest hits.

Speeding onto stage on a Segway, Yankovic brought the audience to their feet for “White and Nerdy” just as much as the original “Ridin’” by Chamillionaire would. Not to be outdone, the next costume change revealed a throwback to simpler times. In fact, it was time “to party like it’s 1699” in “Amish Paradise,” played against the choral Amish crowd singing from the music video; it was a visual spectacle.
After clearing the stage of his strange charm, the band waited a while for an encore, returning in full Star Wars costumed glory for their rendition of “The Saga Begins,” parodying “American Pie” by Don McLean. Of course, the costumes were extra and deserved a performance of “Yoda” too. Weird Al and the band synchronized in an indescribable, choreographed scatting session that randomly erupted in planned kicks or shouts, but otherwise were seamless for what seemed to go on for a good ten minutes, but what it was and where it was going was the most impressive mystery of the night.

Strategic and boundary-bending, like in most of his legendary career, Yankovic and his crew blew away any norms and expectations with a harmonica, a kazoo, a flip of his everlasting curls and a classic weird smile. What more could one ask from the one and only Weird Al, except to come back to DFW again?