Poodle Hat is the eleventh studio album by the American parody musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, released on May 20, 2003. It was the fifth studio album self-produced by Yankovic. Its musical styles are built around parodies and pastiches of pop of the early 2000s. The album's lead single, "Couch Potato", a parody of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem, failed to chart. Four years later, the album's song "eBay", a parody of "I Want It That Way" by Backstreet Boys, reached 15 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles.
The album includes five parodies: "Couch Potato", "eBay", and spoofs of "Hot in Herre" by Nelly, "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne, and "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. The album includes six original songs, several of which parody not a song but the styles of Ben Folds, Beck, and Frank Zappa. A polka medley of popular songs also appears on the album. A music video for the song "Couch Potato" was planned but was cancelled after Eminem objected.
Poodle Hat was released as an Enhanced CD, meaning that when the disc is placed in a computer, bonus content (including alternate song mixes, short videos, and photo galleries) is viewable. The album met with mixed reviews from critics; some felt that the album represented an artistic misstep for Yankovic, whereas others enjoyed its skewering of early 2000s popular culture. The album peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200. It was the first of Yankovic's albums to make the Billboard Comedy Albums chart, where it peaked at number 12.
Production
Originals
On March 25, 2002, recording for Poodle Hat officially began. By mid-2002, six originals—"Hardware Store", "Party at the Leper Colony", "Wanna B Ur Lovr", "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?", "Bob", and "Genius in France"—had been recorded.
The album's first original song is "Hardware Store", a list song that, as the title suggests, is about a new neighborhood hardware store and describes the items that can be purchased there with excruciating detail. The song was originally intended to be a pastiche, or "style parody", of another (unspecified) artist, but during recording sessions it evolved into an original composition. In a GQ interview, Yankovic opted not to reveal the identity of the original parodied musical artist, explaining that if he did, the factoid would end up as a Wikipedia entry.
"Party at the Leper Colony" is a dance song set in a leper colony. The song makes heavy use of wordplay, lampooning common English idioms by taking them literally, often to a grotesque degree, as the characters with leprosy lose body parts throughout the song (e.g. "Dance all night to a rotten band/Come on, people, let's give 'em a hand"). Folds himself plays piano on the track. Yankovic later told The A.V. Club: "Ben and I are old friends at this point, and of course I sought his keyboard work for that song. So he came in and knocked it out. I think that's an F-Sharp, so he was kind of mad at me for that." Lyrically, the song describes a person who, although rejected elsewhere, finds acceptance in France.
The album's second parody, "Trash Day", is a parody of "Hot in Herre" by Nelly. In this song, the narrator discusses the filthiness of his house and bemoans the titular day wherein people place their garbage outside of their living quarters to be picked up by a waste collector and brought to a landfill.
"Angry White Boy Polka", a medley of popular hit songs set to a polka beat, was recorded at the same time as the album's parodies. In regards to the people standing behind him in the subway car, Yankovic specified via the "Ask Al" Q&A on his website:
<blockquote>Well, let's see... the guy with the poodle on his head would be me. The very pregnant woman with the sunglasses is my wife Suzanne. The guy in the surgical scrubs is my friend Joel Miller. The woman in the foreground with her legs crossed is my first-cousin-once-removed Tammy (who also played Queen Amidala in my video for "The Saga Begins"). Uh Jeff, the guy that screens my fan mail, is the guy wearing the NY Yankees cap way in the back. Steve Jay's son Ian is the really tall blond bicycle messenger. Tracy Berna, one of the writers for The Weird Al Show, is the waitress with the beehive hair-do. The Boy Scout is Dylan Bostick, the oldest son of one of Suzanne's oldest friends. Bermuda's wife Leslie is in there too. Plus there's my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my electrician, a couple from my church, the owner of my favorite ice cream shop, my aunt's boyfriend... I think we got maybe 2 or 3 people from the casting office, but the overwhelming majority were friends and family members that just wanted to come to the shoot.</blockquote>
The album was released on an Enhanced CD, and when the CD is placed into a computer, bonus content is made available. This content includes several of Yankovic's real home videos and his commentary on them, as well as synchronized lyrics and instrumental or acoustic versions of some songs. A photo gallery is also included.
Music video controversy
thumb|right|The album's opening track is "Couch Potato", a parody of [[Eminem's (pictured) single "Lose Yourself". Although Eminem approved of the parody, he vetoed Yankovic's request to film a music video.|alt=Eminem performing]]
A music video for "Couch Potato" was to be shot shortly after the album's release, but Eminem denied Yankovic permission to shoot it. Yankovic told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2003:
<blockquote>We were already in pre-production. We believed that it was just a formality, that Eminem just wanted to hear the final mix of the song... And then we got a phone call saying he was not going to give permission for a video. We were devastated [...] I certainly don't have any bad feelings toward Eminem. He was gracious enough to let us use the song on the album—and we use "The Real Slim Shady" in the "Angry White Boy Polka" medley, too. But this is the first album I've ever released without an accompanying video.</blockquote>
According to Yankovic, Eminem worried that a parody of his video might "detract from his legacy [and] that [...] would somehow make people take him less seriously as an important hip-hop artist". Musicologist Lily Hirsch noted that, while race was not mentioned by either party, the powerful visual impression of a Weird Al video could have undermined Eminem's efforts to be seen as a serious rap artist instead of a "wigger".
Yankovic was rather upset that a video for "Couch Potato" would not be made, as he felt that it would have been "the best video that [he had] ever done". Eminem later discussed the mock interview in the book The Way I Am, wherein he claimed to have taken the jab in good fun:
<blockquote>Weird Al also got me. He made a video, did a fake interview with me, spliced it with clips from my old interviews, and put it up on the Internet. He's a very funny motherfucker. When something like that happens, you have to sit back and say, "Oh, he got me." It's something you pick up from battles: you learn to be a good sport about a lot of stuff. If you want to dish it out, you've got to be able to take it.</blockquote>
So that the album would not be without a video, a quick one for "Bob" was shot, which references the promotional clip of Dylan's song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", which was shot for the 1967 D. A. Pennebaker documentary Dont Look Back. It was used on the tour and for the 2003 edition of Al TV. The video for "Bob" was subsequently released on "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Ultimate Video Collection DVD (2003).