Song: Fat
Running Time: 4:56
Year: 1988
Album: Even Worse, Greatest Hits 1, Food Album, Al-In-The-Box, Fat, The Saga Begins
Parody of: Bad by Michael Jackson
Genre: Pop rock
Guitar tuning: C standard
Lyrics: Lyrics
Video: See Visuals
Download/Listen: Mp3
Trivia[]
- The video set was a recreation of the set of Michael Jackson's Bad video, which had recently been constructed for use in Jackson's film Moonwalker. Jackson let Weird Al use the set for free.
- A sequel for this song, Fatter was planned, but not released.
- This is one of the Weird Al songs where the theme is Obesity.
- When Weird Al performs this song in concert, he wears the fat makeup and suit that make his body look pudgy, along with a mask that makes his face look fat.
- Weird Al’s fat makeup took three hours to apply each day for the music video.
- One of the dancers was just an obese pizza delivery guy who needed the paycheck.
- The taunters were none other than the Fat Boys.
- in the second HO! Part, One of the Fat dancers give him a Hoe but in the Live Versions, Santa Claus is saying HO HO HO and Weird Al beats him up.
Music video[]
- The lighting in Jackson's video is much darker. Weird Al filmed his parody video with much brighter lighting and it appears as though it was filmed in the daytime.
- The video starts off with a non-musical black-and-white scene, just like in the original, but the scene is shortened. We begin at the subway station where a trio of obese men, played by Lou B. Washington, who later joined the cast of Weird Al's 1989 film UHF, criticizing Weird Al for not eating much unhealthy food lately, possibly a parody of real gangsters pressuring unsuspecting kids to try drugs. They try to get Weird Al to eat a hamburger, a slice of pizza, and finally, a ding dong, which they pull out of their pockets. The original video consisted of Jackson coming back from high school and his old street friends bugging him about going to school and becoming soft.
- The lines "are you fat or what" and "you ain't fat, you ain't nothin'", mimicking lines in the original, only using the word "fat", instead of "bad".
- After the non-musical black-and-white scene, Weird Al was joined by a group of six obese dancers. The original video consisted of Jackson with at least twenty dancers.
- The six dancers from Jackson, which are now with Weird Al in the video are obese, instead of skinny.
- Instead of a troupe of dancers sliding along the ground, the video for "Fat" shows Weird Al getting fatter and fatter. The dancers are making a "shush" gesture as the song started playing.
- Weird Al's black outfit looks just like Jackson's, but the buckle and zipper ornamentation is exaggerated.
- Weird Al does Jackson's famous "crotch-grab", but with sound effects added.
- In "Bad", Jackson said "Shamone, shamone, lay it on me, all right". In "Fat", Weird Al said "Ham on, ham on, ham on whole wheat, all right" as Weird Al eats his food very fast.
- When Weird Al tries to jump over the turnstiles on the first bridge of the song, he can't get over. Jackson by contrast, easily jumps on, then off.
- In one musical interlude, Weird Al jumps on a dancer and crushes him, while Jackson merely jumps on his shoulder.
- In the middle end, the dancers are holding a line closer to each other, while in "Bad", the dancers are doing the same thing, but slower and easier.
- In "Bad", Jackson moves in a circle while the camera follows him. In "Fat", Weird Al also moves in a circle while the camera follows him, but for much longer. Eventually, Weird Al moves too fast and begins to fly. He grabs a hold of the tripod not to fly away. But loses his grip and flies off with a startled cry.
- When Weird Al flings his arms around, sound effects are heard. This is direct reference to the noises heard when Jackson flings his arms. Weird Al acts confused testing out the sound effect movements and moves other parts of his body, making other sound effects. Weird Al's dancers also appear confused.
- In "Bad", Jackson screams for no reason at random times. Weird Al parodied this by having a scene where he and his dancers screamed "Ho!" every now and then. One of six obese dancers handed Weird Al a particular gardening tool, and Weird Al comments on it by saying "Hoe!".
- The camera follows Weird Al and six obese dancers as they chase through the station, when Weird Al is handed the gardening tool. After a brief pause, he and six obese dancers realize, the camera is still panning, and they started to chase again, moving even faster to try to get into the camera's viewpoint, now yelling "Ho!" to get the camera to slow down. Eventually, Weird Al and six obese dancers are off-camera. Upon returning to where they left off is discovered that they are now catching their breath from the chasing that Jackson and his troupe are able to do easily. Weird Al is leaning against a pillar and tilts it, while six obese dancers catch their breath.
- When Weird Al and six obese dancers chase upstairs and takes out the air vent cover. He spins and flourishes excessively in a parody of Jackson's dancing advance towards the vent. Also, the wind in this video is much stronger. Six obese dancers started blowing away while Weird Al is holding up a small pinwheel-type fan to stay standing as his dancers are blowing out of sight. A chicken is seen flying at the camera, and a tumbleweed can also be seen.
- At one point near the end, Jackson whoops three times in a row. The third time, Weird Al was holding up a speech bubble that consisted of the word "WOO!" instead of actually singing it, satirizing the voice of Michael Jackson, in which mouthing words are not heard.
- Instead of dancers dancing near the end, the dancers can be seen bumping their stomachs, and falling over each other like dominoes. In this scene, the word "FAT" is spray painted on the wall, instead of "BAD".
- The wanted poster near the end is different. Instead of "WANTED FOR SACRILEGE" with the word "BAD" below, the poster reads "WANTED FOR GLUTTONY" with the word "FAT" underneath.
- The man in the roller skates walks very slowly and with much difficulty, instead of smoothly. While in "Bad", one of the dancers is seen doing a version of the moonwalk, where he is not moving at all.
- When Jackson and his troupe run up the stairs near the end, one of the dancers does a continuous amount of back flips. In "Fat", one of Weird Al's dancers tries to do a single cartwheel and barely makes it, Although, he celebrates though this is a great success.
- In "Bad", Jackson screams at the end of the video for no apparent reason. In "Fat", Weird Al screams at the end of the video, where his fingers got caught in a mousetrap that seemingly came out of nowhere. The same sound effect is used for the mousetrap as from earlier when Weird Al was waving his arms around.
- Finally at the very end, Weird Al says "Who's fat?", while Jackson says "Who's bad?". Officially, the video freezes with a freeze frame shot of Weird Al holding his fist. In "Bad", it freezes with Jackson a foot away from the screen. Although on the full version of the video, he sings a bit longer, as the parts are in the original song, while the parts are not in "Fat".