Etix<\/a> and by phone at 800-514-3849. Puddles Pity Party opens.<\/p>\nYankovic, 66, began playing the accordion at the age of seven and grew up listening to Elton John, Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg and Frank Zappa. When he was 16, radio DJ and Minneapolis native Dr. Demento spoke at his high school and Yankovic gave him a cassette recording of a song he wrote about his family\u2019s Plymouth Belvedere. Dr. Demento played it on his syndicated comedy show, which Yankovic credits as the launch of his musical career.<\/p>\n
While studying architecture at California Polytechnic State University, Yankovic began writing parody songs starting with \u201cMy Bologna,\u201d a riff on the Knack\u2019s hit \u201cMy Sharona.\u201d He continued to get played on Dr. Demento\u2019s radio show and, in 1981, joined the DJ\u2019s stage show on tour. The following year, he signed a deal with Scotti Brothers Records.<\/p>\n
Yankovic\u2019s self-titled debut album arrived in 1983 and featured the parody singles \u201cAnother One Rides the Bus,\u201d \u201cRicky\u201d and \u201cI Love Rocky Road\u201d alongside seven original songs. He broke to a wider audience with his follow-up, \u201c \u2018Weird Al\u2019 Yankovic in 3-D,\u201d thanks to his hit Michael Jackson parody \u201cEat It.\u201d MTV put the video into heavy rotation and aired a series of specials starring Yankovic.<\/p>\n
While it seemed like Yankovic\u2019s shelf life would be short, he continued releasing albums through 2014\u2019s \u201cMandatory Fun,\u201d his first to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. He has said that\u2019s his final record, although he has since issued a series of singles. Yankovic has won five Grammy awards out of 17 nominations and stands as the biggest-selling comedy artist in history.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Yankovic embarked on what he called the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. On it, he scaled back his multimedia concerts to a more intimate series of theater shows with a set list filled largely with his original songs, not the parody numbers that made him famous. It turned out to be a hit with his fans, and he revisited the concept in 2022.<\/p>\n
Last year, Yankovic returned to his large-scale set list and stage, with a giant video wall, multiple costume changes and an eight-piece ensemble featuring his original band. More than 500,000 fans attended 75 concerts across 67 cities. Next year\u2019s tour is even bigger and will hit 90 cities. It includes numerous other stops in the region, including Rapid City (June 24), Duluth (June 26), Sioux Falls (June 30), Cedar Rapids (July 1), Grand Forks (Aug. 29) and Green Bay (Oct. 16).<\/p>\n
The 2026 Minnesota State Fair will run Aug. 27 through Labor Day, Sept. 7.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic is the first act announced for the 2026 Minnesota State Fair Grandstand series. Tickets for his Aug. 28 show \u2014 which will be the seventh time the pop parodist has played the Grandstand \u2014 are priced from $89.25 to $54 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Etix and by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[415153,415154,392972,354912,415155,350545,415152,403820,344628],"class_list":["post-2163299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-allan-sherman","tag-california-polytechnic-state-university","tag-dr-demento","tag-minnesota-state-fair","tag-parody-songs","tag-puddles-pity-party","tag-stan-freberg","tag-weird-al","tag-weird-al-yankovic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163300,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163299\/revisions\/2163300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}