Background Yankovic's 1992 album
Off the Deep End, his best-selling album since 1984's
"Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D, had revived his career and displayed his "credibility as an evolving artist" after the commercial failures of his 1986 work
Polka Party! and his feature film
UHF. Yankovic recorded all of the album's original songs, except "Talk Soup" and "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", by the end of 1992 and, in July 1993, recorded all of
Alapaloozas remaining tracks, aside from "Livin' in the Fridge". Yankovic eventually decided to title his new album
Alapalooza, a reference to the
Lollapalooza music festival. The Yankovic dinosaur in the album's booklet was designed by David Peters, who had worked previously with the singer on the "
Dare to Be Stupid" video.
Alapalooza was released on October 5, 1993, in the United States. Globally, some versions included a notice distinguishing it from the
official Jurassic Park film soundtrack, as the two cover designs were similar. The
Japanese edition contained a bonus track of Yankovic singing "Jurassic Park" in Japanese.
Originals Alapalooza contains seven original songs among its twelve tracks, although "Young, Dumb & Ugly" and "Frank's 2000" TV" were meant to be stylistic parodies of
AC/DC and the early work of
R.E.M., respectively. For the former, Yankovic wanted to parody the
heavy metal music genre while at the same time avoiding a repetition of what had already been done by
Spinal Tap. He ended up disliking the final product because he sang it "in a
register that was really too high for [his] singing voice". "Waffle King", the track that had been intended for
Off the Deep End, was written as "a song about a guy who becomes incredibly famous for doing something kinda stupid, and then starts taking himself way too seriously". Yankovic included "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", a short tune from one of his
Al TV appearances, after receiving numerous requests to include it on an album. After hearing "
Lola" by
The Kinks on the radio and recalling how much he had enjoyed his previous pairing of a contemporary film with a classic song (1985's "
Yoda"), Yankovic came up with the idea for a tune based around the recently released
Jurassic Park film. He received permission from Webb,
Jurassic Park author
Michael Crichton, and director
Steven Spielberg to produce the track. For the music video Yankovic collaborated with animators
Mark Osborne and Scott Nordlund to produce a
claymation feature that parodied scenes from the movie; The music video was directed by Osborne and Nordlund, while Yankovic came up with the original concept and ideas for some of the shots; Osborne said that the directors "came up with about half the ideas in collaboration" with Yankovic. Having always wanted to write a tribute to
The Flintstones, Yankovic next focused his energy on creating a song that he hoped would be current with the impending release of
The Flintstones live action film in 1994. In order to collect sound bites and animation and "re-familiarize" himself with the characters, Yankovic watched over 100 episodes of the original show. A parody of both
Red Hot Chili Peppers' "
Under the Bridge" and "
Give It Away", the resulting song was a comedic tribute to the program. It ended up becoming the second single released from
Alapalooza. "Livin' in the Fridge", a parody of
Aerosmith's "
Livin' on the Edge" that discusses leftovers that have grown sentient in the refrigerator, was the last song to be recorded for the album. With a deadline looming, Yankovic sent requests to several artists to do parodies of their songs. He ultimately went with Aerosmith because they replied first. called "
Bohemian Polka". Unlike previous medleys, which had featured portions of multiple songs, "Bohemian Polka" contains only one tune,
Queen's "
Bohemian Rhapsody", and is a rearrangement of the entire song as a
polka. ==Reception==