Screenshot
Song: Don't Download This Song
Running Time: 3:54
Year: 2005
Album: Straight Outta Lynwood, White & Nerdy
Style Parody of: 80's group charity songs genre, USA For Africa ("We Are The World"), "Hands Across America", and "Do They Know It's Christmas?".
Genre: Pop/Gospel
Guitar tuning: E standard
Lyrics: Lyrics
Video: Yes
Download/Listen:
- iTunes ($0.99)
Forum: Forum Discussion Page
Trivia[]
- Video animated by Bill Plympton, who also animated the video for "TMZ".
- Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, and LimeWire are music-sharing programs.
- During the song's fade out you can hear Al say "You cheap bastard!". Weird Al doesn't swear (neither in his music or his day-to-day life) so (prior to The Hamilton Polka), this is arguably the strongest language present in his entire body of work.
- "It doesn't matter if you're a grandma" is likely a reference to 83 year-old Gertrude Walton, whom the RIAA sued despite being deceased.
- "Or a seven year-old girl" is likely a reference to Kylee Andersen, whom the RIAA sued at age 10 for suspected copyright infringement made at age 7.
- Lars Ulrich is the drummer for Metallica. Ulrich's stance against copyright infringement (hence, "even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong") led Metallica to successfully sue file-sharing website Napster. Napster was forced to remove all Metallica songs from the site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc.
- Tommy Chong is an actor and marijuana enthusiast who pled guilty to a conspiracy to distribute glass paraphernalia and was sentenced to nine months in prison ("please don't you do it or you might wind up in jail like Tommy Chong"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Chong#US_vs._Chong
- Ironically, this song was available as a free download on both Weird Al's Myspace page and YouTube channel.