"Weird Al" Yankovic’s 2014 album Mandatory Fun became the biggest hit of his career, drawing huge audiences for its eight promotional videos that include song parodies of Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” (“Handy”), Pharrell’s “Happy” (“Tacky”), Lorde’s “Royals” (“Foil”) and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” (“Word Crimes”). Now he’s ready to reach out to live audiences with an extensive tour that kicks off with a five shows in Las Vegas, and Las Vegas Magazine’s Matt Kelemen talked with the beloved accordion player about what he describes as a dream engagement.

Why does “Word Crimes” sound so much like “Got to Give It Up?”

(Laughs) Thankfully I haven’t been sued by the Marvin Gaye estate yet. I think my royalty checks just go to a different place now.

You pretty much compensate the artists you parody.

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Obviously it’s their music, so they share in the royalties. In fact, every single parody that I do we have to work out a deal. There’s a boilerplate, but it’s all negotiable. It all needs to be worked out.

“Word Crimes” is the No. 3 all-time most popular video on your YouTube channel right now, with “White and Nerdy” No. 1 at 95.6 million views.

Oh, wow.

That’s pretty amazing. Are you aware of how many views you’ve been reaching lately?

I kind of keep tabs on it. It’s kind of hard to really quantify it, because not all the views are on YouTube and some of the early views got discarded because some of the videos got deleted or a bunch of fans would upload the video at the same time, and they’d get millions of views and they’d be taken down. But, yeah, I’m aware that “Word Crimes”—and really a lot of the videos off the new album—did quite well.

“Word Crimes,” “Tacky” and “Handy” were Nos. 1, 2 and 3 from the new album.

And what are we leaving off … “Foil?” The other thing that makes it hard to figure out if a lot of these videos had an exclusivity window. “Tacky” was exclusively on Nerdist channel and “Foil” was exclusively on CollegeHumor. So they got 20 million hits on those channels before it even went to YouTube.

Your falsetto is amazing on “Word Crimes” considering how long you’ve been singing. Are there songs you’ve wanted to reimagine that your voice range didn’t fit?

Any male vocalist, I feel like I can come close enough. I mean, I feel like I should be able to hit the range. The only time I have to make concessions is when I cover a female artist, because I just don’t have the same range as a female artist I have to take it down like three or four steps. Otherwise I give it my best shot.

Journey is in town doing a residency at the same time as you, which creates this really cool ‘Weird Al’ vs. Journey dynamic. I don’t think you’ve ever covered a Journey song. Could that be out of your range a little bit?

That would be tough, that would be tough.

How did the idea of an extended Vegas run come up? You’re starting a very long tour here.

Doing an extended run in Vegas is something I’ve wanted to do for decades, just because I thought … I don’t want to be tooting my own horn here but I feel like I’m the ideal Vegas act. It’s a family-friendly show. It’s got a lot of production value. It’s funny. It’s something that everyone can enjoy. It appeals to a wide range of people demographically, and what better for Vegas? I’ve done a lot of shows in Vegas but they’ve all been one-offs, and this is the first time when we’ve been able to do any kind of extended run at all. Granted, five nights is not that extended, but it’s a start and I’m hoping that Planet Hollywood does well enough that someone will want me to come back for awhile.

Is this the show that you’re subsequently taking on the road?

It is. Because they’re the first five shows they will be a little different in that there will be a little bit of a learning curve, because whenever we start a tour we do a lot of stuff that we don’t know if it’s going to go over or not. The film elements run a little bit long because we don’t know how long it’s going to take for the costume changes, so the first few shows are going to be sort of feeling our way. The hardcore fans will enjoy it because the first show of a tour and the last show of a tour wind up being fairly different because it’s been honed and drilled down. The first couple of shows are going to be informative as far as: How much time do we need? What works creatively? What are people responding to? And then by the third or fourth show it’ll be pretty much drilled down, I think.

Obviously you’re going to focus on the new material because it’s so popular, but are you going to perform deep cuts too? Or does your set list skew towards the more contemporary material?

We like to throw in more deep cuts for the hardcore fans. At this point it’s been a long career and there’s a lot to work in. Obviously we want to focus on the material from Mandatory Fun, but also we want to give the people what they want and play all the hits. We have to do all that as well. Between that and the video elements the show is between two and two-and-a-half hours. It’s “An Evening with Al,” but we’re working in a few surprises here and there.

What do you have planned for set design and costume changes? What are people going to see?

There’s a big LED screen behind us where we have the interstitial elements and the video that runs behind us onstage. There’s a costume change for almost every song. I come out in a “Fat” suit. I come out as Kurt Cobain. We come out as Amish people for “Amish Paradise.” We come out in Jedi robes for the Star Wars songs. It’s a very theatrical kind of show. It’s not just a bunch of guys up on stage playing instruments and singing. It’s a real show.

So you have a precision thing going on backstage. You probably have to have an almost Broadway-level stage manager or something to make sure everything happens like clockwork.

Well, you know, we kind of get it down to a science. That’s why I say the first couple of shows will be figuring out exactly how long each moving part is going to take, because by the end of the first week we want not a wasted second. We want just enough time to barely be able to slip on the clothes, and run off onstage and do the song.

It’s fantastic that you’re the guest editor for MAD magazine this month. It’s pretty clear to see where you fit in the lineage of humorists such as Stan Freberg, Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman and even Frank Zappa.

Frank Zappa, yeah.

But how much influence did MAD magazine have in your development?

Huge.

Like if we were looking at a pie chart?

It’s hard to say exactly, but huge. I was obsessed with MAD when I was like 11, 12 years old. I subscribed, obviously. I would have my parents drive me all around town to the used magazine shops to scour the stacks for back issues. I was really irritating to people, trying to go through their attics trying to find old copies of the magazine. And in fact, when I was 12 years old, my school guidance counselor was trying to get kids to figure out what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives, and I said I want to write for MAD magazine. And he talked me out of it. He said, “Comedy is a hard line of work to get into. You’re good at drafting. You’re good at math. Why don’t you try being an architect?” I said, “Ok, I’ll be an architect.”

Your parodies are such an extension of [MAD artist] Mort Drucker musical satires.

Oh, absolutely.

Was that a particularly strong developmental element?

Absolutely. A lot of people describe my whole career as sort of an audio version of MAD magazine, which I take as a huge compliment. Obviously, MAD … I was weaned on MAD. It really informed my whole sensibility.

Do you know the West Side Story parody East Side Story?

Sure.

I read that before I saw West Side Story, so when I saw West Side Story I knew all the songs.

That’s the thing, when I was a kid a lot of the movies they were making fun of in MAD, I was too young to see. Or I didn’t have access to them because this was before VHS rentals. If it didn’t show up on TV, I didn’t see it. So I was familiar, more or less, with the plot of all of these movies way before I ever saw the movies. Same thing with politics—I wasn’t watching the evening news, but I kind of had a big sense of who Nixon was and who Kissinger was, and Khrushchev. I learned world politics through MAD magazine as well.

I can see a direct connection to your lyric style. Do you have lyrics that have become personal favorites?

It’s hard to think of anything specific. Some songs work better than others. A lot of my early material feels rushed, because I remember in the ’80s I was sort of like, “I’ve gotta put out an album every year or people will forget who I am.” I had this instilled in my head, like “You’re gonna be here today, gone tomorrow.” Blink and it’s gone, you know? So I didn’t spend as much time as maybe I should have.

Certainly after the first several albums I figured out, “OK, I might be here for a while so I can slow it down, do this on my own schedule.” There are a few things. Sometimes I listen to my old material and every now and then a line will come up and I’ll go, “Oh, that was pretty good!”

How about musically? Do you have certain songs you like to perform live or do you love all your children equally?

I could pick a few, but it’s difficult. There are some songs that are more fun than others to play live. I usually pick “Wanna B Ur Lovr,” which is sort of an original song done in a Beck/Prince style.

Is that a little backhanded message to Prince for not letting you use his songs?

It’s not meant to be. It’s sort of in the style of Beck’s Midnight Vultures album, and he was sort of doing his homage to Prince. I actually enjoy doing that song because I cross the proscenium and faux-seduce all the women in the audience, which is always kind of fun because at that point you never know what’s going to happen. Everything onstage is timed to the second, but once you leave the stage and go into the audience, anything can happen, so that’s always exciting to me.

Next year’s going to be the 25th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Your parody came the next year, and stories I’ve read depict “Smells Like Nirvana” as a pivotal moment in your career, when things went on an upswing [for the first time since Yankovic’s film UHF bombed at the box office]. What does it mean for you now?

That’s always really been a special song for me to play. It was very difficult to play after Kurt passed away because we were on tour when he died. It was awkward because it was the hit and people wanted to hear it, but at the same time it felt a little tasteless to do that. I talked to people that were close to the band and we all sort of agreed that we should continue playing the song. But for a while, right before we played it I would do a very somber dedication to Kurt. Kurt loved the song. He got a kick out of it, and I look at it as a celebration of his music, certainly more than mocking him or the band.

He would have been a good accordion player.

I think so, yeah.

Do you have signature accordions or favorite instruments? Do you name them, or have sentimental favorites?

I’ve got several stage accordions. I just heard from my stage manager that the accordion we used on the road last tour is pretty beat up. We need to get some new ones. Mostly I’ve been scouring used accordion shops because it’s hard to find accordions in the size and style that I like. The accordion that I play is considered a ladies’ accordion, or a student accordion. It’s not the full-sized one.

So you can jump around.

Exactly. The full-size ones are big and they’re heavy, and they’re not easy to kick over your head while you’re playing them.

Your tour is so extensive. It’s so amazing how you’re able to maintain this pace, powered by fan devotion judging from all the people that came to your autography signing at The Linq yesterday.

That definitely helps. It’s pretty grueling being on the road and traveling. It’s exhausting and it drains a lot out of you, but I get that adrenaline boost every time I go out onstage, and the support from the fans really kind of guides me through the whole thing.

Does it continue to grow? Does it seem to get bigger and bigger as years go by?

It seems to. It seems to. It’s been at a pretty high level for some time, but this tour … against all odds it feels even bigger. We’re selling out in a lot of places, or close to it, and there’s a huge excitement level for this your. I’m excited to get out, play the new songs for the fans, and we’re all anxious to get going.

Planet Hollywood, 8 p.m., May 12-16, $65-$95, 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster