Everything old is new again. Turns out music executive Barry Weiss left Sony Music a diamond in the rough when he exited to run Universal Music Group’s East Coast operations. The former Sony boss, who ran Sony’s Zomba Records, signed up “Weird Al” Yankovic decades ago. Weiss is now an independent consultant.
This week, Yankovic took over the Internet and notched his third top 10 album.
Weird Al took a page out of Beyoncé’s playbook by releasing a series of videos to promote a new album.
Yankovic set social media alight last week, issuing a video spoof per day on songs such as “Happy,” “Blurred Lines” and “Royals.”
But music fans didn’t just share the videos for laughs, they bought the songs as well, landing Yankovic’s album “Mandatory Fun” in the No. 1 slot.
The singer only had to sell 104,000 copies to get there, according to Nielsen SoundScan stats.