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For the First Time Since 1963, a Comedy Album is #1

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After 30 years making people laugh with his parodies, Weird Al Yankovic is finally at the top of his game.

The comedian’s latest album Mandatory Fun—his fourteenth traditional studio record—has just been announced as the new number one album in the country for the week ending July 20. Billboard confirmed the good news earlier today after a week or so of speculation about who would claim the top spot.

The album, his last with RCA Records according to his current contract, managed to sell 104,000 copies—much higher than industry forecasters originally guessed. Going into the week of the release, Weird Al and singer-songwriter Jason Mraz were pitted against one another, with both expected to sell somewhere near 70,000 copies of their new albums. Mraz collects his second consecutive runner-up album with Yes!

Shockingly, Mandatory Fun is the first comedy album to reach number one in over five decades, making Weird Al’s triumph that much more special. The last title in the comedy genre to hit the penthouse was Allan Sherman’s My Son, the Nut, which sat in the top spot for eight weeks back in 1963. In addition, Fun also has the largest sales week for a comedy album in twenty years. It misses eclipsing The Beavis & Butt-Head Experience, which moved 118,000 copies in 1994.

The surprise success of the new album is attributed to a highly viral and well-publicized collection of music videos the parodist released in the past week. Since last Monday, Yankovic has premiered one new clip every day on well-trafficked sites like Yahoo, Collegehumor, and the Wall Street Journal. Not only was there a new story every day to spread around social media and the blogosphere, but most of them were of songs that either are popular now or have been recently.

The twelve track CD is a mixture of traditional parodies and comedic originals in the style of popular bands. Weird Al covers everything from song of the summer “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea to Pharrell's Oscar-nominated “Happy” to football fight songs and the Foo Fighters. Nothing is off limits to the Grammy winner, though he did go out of his way to secure permission for each and every song. The beloved comedian is known to get the OK  from the original artist before releasing parodies, and this time around they were all too happy to oblige. For example, when Weird Al’s manager didn’t hear back from Pharrell's team, he took matters into his own hands, emailing the super producer himself.

"He couldn't have been nicer and he said he was honored to have me do the parody." Al said of their interaction. The same is apparently so for the other artists who agreed to let their songs be included.