Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Evening Groove / Three Tune Tuesday post.

As always, thanks to @ablaze for making this series. Lots of people participate in it! Follow the tags to find a ton of good music recommendation.

As I sat down for today's post, I still had Weird Al in my head from last week's post. So I decided to do a round two today!

But instead of just picking and introducing another selection of three of his songs, I thought I'd introduce a constraint and look at a subgenre of his songs.

Weird Al plays an accordion and is quite good. Maybe because of that, he is a fan of polka music. Polka and the accordion just seem to go together, don't they? His grandparents were from Yugoslavian, so perhaps that had some influence too in his gravitating towards polka.

At any rate, on all of his albums he includes one polka song which lyrically is a combination of many current popular songs. Unlike his parody songs, he usually doesn't alter the words of the original song, relying on the polka music itself and his performance of the songs for the humor.

Sounds strange, but they work well. In fact, his polka songs have gone on to be among his most popular songs.

So for this post, I'm going to pick my favorites of his polka songs.

Polka Party

This one was released in 1986, so the songs he plays with mostly all of that time (but not entirely). Included are Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, Sussudio by Phil Collins, Say You Say Me by Lionel Richie, Papa Don't Preach by Madonna, and more. Many people rate this one as one of his less good polka songs, but I really love this song. Maybe because I grew up with all the songs he combines.

Anyway, if you've never heard it before, give it a chance. I bet you'll be smiling by the time it's over!

Polka Your Eyes Out

Released in 1992, this one probably is his most popular polka song. It includes his versions of Love Shack by the B-52s, Enter Sandman by Metallica, Cherry Pie by Warrant, Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, and more! Just when you think he's run out of songs, he brings in another. It's really great!

Angry While Boy Polka

This one is from 2003. In includes things you might never expect from Al, like Rage Against the Machine and Eminem. System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock also have their hits copied, among others!

Bonus I: The Hamilton Polka

For my bonus pick, let's go with this one. Every song in here is from the Broadway musical Hamilton.

Bonus II: Bohemian Polka

This one is unique among his polka songs in that it is a single song, a polka cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Bold, crazy, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Really you can't go wrong with any of his polka songs. So what's your favorite?

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.