Trivia / Poodle Hat

• Creator Backlash: Al feels this way in regards to "Party at the Leper Colony", feeling like it is in poor taste, even by his own occasionally-irreverent standards. Though he performed this song a couple times during The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, he opened the song with a half-joking apology.
• Doing It for the Art: Al spent more time working on "Genius in France" than any other song in his catalog, saying the process to create it took months. It is a nine-minute song with bizarre, complex production and an esoteric premise, thus handicapping it from any sort of mainstream success. However, he committed this much time to the song because he felt a personal obligation to produce the best tribute to Frank Zappa, one of his most admired artists, he possibly can.
• Rarely Performed Song: Thanks to the song's Motor Mouth bridge being too difficult to replicate, Al never performs "Hardware Store" live.
• Referenced by...: NintendoCapriSun has partially built his image off of his love for this album. He's admitted that "Hardware Store" is his favorite Weird Al song, and his Catchphrase of, "in the bathroom," is lifted directly from "A Complicated Song".
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Couch Potato" was planned to have an accompanying music video. Eminem approved the song, but he revoked permission for the video at the last possible minute. Instead, Al hastily shot one for "Bob".
  • Before settling for a "Bob" video, Al considered making the lead music video "eBay" instead. However, two factors deterred him from doing this. First, the song it parodied, "I Want It That Way" by Backstreet Boys, was a few years old by the time "Poodle Hat" was planned for release, not making it a topical choice. Second, eBay had commercials on television at the time that were song parodies, and Al didn't want it to seem as if he was producing a commercial for the website. However, when it became the most successful song on the album and remained played and relevant through the late-2000s, he said he wish he had made the video anyways, believing it would have made the album more successful.
  • Clarence Clemons was meant to play the saxophone on "Party at the Leper Colony", but he cancelled his appearance in the studio a couple days beforehand because he learned what the song's title was.
  • Al had written down lyrics to incomplete songs about three different subjects: constipation, incest and decapitation. Unsure of which one to finish, he made each into a verse of "A Complicated Song".

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