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Who is the funniest musician?

The funniest musician is "Weird Al" Yankovic, according to Westword's ten best comedic musicians, where he is No. 1, and Paste's 2015 list of great musical comedians, because he keeps a famous song's tune and swaps its lyrics for something gloriously petty, like a sandwich, a meal or a grammar lesson.

Updated · Based on Paste (August 14, 2015), The Saturday Evening Post (February 17, 2021) and Associated Press (July 28, 2025)

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Nobody runs an official poll on this, so the evidence is editors' lists. Denver's Westword ranked Yankovic first and Tom Lehrer second; Amanda Wicks's 2015 list for Paste, which runs in no particular order, closes on Yankovic with the line "No list would be complete without the man himself." The same Paste list includes Victor Borge, the Danish pianist billed as the Clown Prince of Denmark. All three made the music itself carry the joke: Yankovic through parody, Lehrer through cheerful tunes about grim subjects, Borge through classical concerts that kept going wrong on purpose.

The pick: "Weird Al" Yankovic

American parody songwriter and accordionist, recording since 1979

Ranked No. 1 by Westword's list of comedic musicians and given the closing spot on Paste's 2015 list of musical comedians.

Also in the running

  • Tom Lehrer (American song satirist and math teacher, 1928–2025): Second on Westword's list and first in the running order of Paste's 2015 list; Yankovic and Randy Newman both cited him as an influence, the Associated Press reported in 2025.
  • Victor Borge (Danish-American pianist and comedian, 1909–2000): On Paste's 2015 list as the Clown Prince of Denmark; his one-man Broadway show Comedy in Music ran 849 performances.
  • Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand musical comedy duo): Eighth on Westword's list, which credits their deadpan songs about dull modern lives.

What made them funny

Yankovic's path started at a door. According to Troy Brownfield's February 17, 2021 history in The Saturday Evening Post, a door-to-door salesman sold his family accordion lessons when Alfred Matthew Yankovic was six. At 16, City News Service later reported, he was at Lynwood High School when he handed a homemade tape to radio host Dr. Demento, and "Belvedere Cruisin'" went on the air. "My Bologna," his 1979 rewrite of The Knack's "My Sharona," became a Capitol Records single with help from The Knack's own Doug Fieger.

From there the formula scaled. "Eat It" (1984) took Michael Jackson's "Beat It" to the dinner table, reached No. 12 on the pop chart and won a Grammy for Best Comedy Recording. Mandatory Fun (2014) was the first comedy album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and its grammar rant "Word Crimes" gave him Top 40 singles in four straight decades, a club City News Service said he shares with Michael Jackson, Madonna and U2. He got star number 2,643 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 27, 2018, and called it "my one real shot at immortality."

The runners-up worked from the other end of the piano. Lehrer entered Harvard at 15, wrote about three dozen songs, and mostly stopped touring around 1959 to teach math; in 2020 he let anyone use his lyrics without a fee. Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen in 1909, reached the United States on August 28, 1940 with $20, joined Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall, and turned recitals into slapstick, falling off his bench and playing music upside down.

Techniques to take into your videos and sets

  1. 1. Keep the tune, shrink the stakes

    What they did

    Yankovic's core move is to leave a hit's melody and attitude untouched and point it at something tiny. Jackson's warning about street fights became a parent nagging a kid to finish dinner; a song about desire became a song about a lunch meat.

    Why it works

    The audience already knows how big the original feels, so every bar of that grandeur spent on a sandwich is a fresh mismatch. The borrowed shape does the setup for free.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    I gave returning a duvet cover the full heist-movie treatment: three exits mapped, receipt sealed in a ziplock, getaway car idling in the IKEA loading zone.

    Try it

    Pick a genre everyone recognizes in two seconds (heist, nature documentary, sports commentary) and run its exact music, pacing and camera moves over the smallest errand you did this week.

  2. 2. Throw a party for a pet peeve

    What they did

    "Word Crimes," the break-out from Mandatory Fun, set a full lecture on grammar mistakes to the beat of a summer club hit. A nitpick that would empty a room as a speech filled the Billboard Top 40 as a dance track.

    Why it works

    Pettiness is funny when it is delivered with total conviction and big production. The gap between how much energy is spent and how little is at stake is the laugh.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    I wrote a four-verse power ballad about whoever keeps leaving one wet sock in the shared dryer, with a key change for the verse where it turns out to be mine.

    Try it

    Choose your most specific complaint and give it the loudest format you can make: a hype track, an awards speech, a stadium announcement. Don't wink at the camera.

  3. 3. Add one to every number

    What they did

    Borge's routine Inflationary Language raised every number, and every sound like a number, by one, so "wonderful" came out "twoderful" and "once upon a time" became "twice upon a time." One simple rule, applied without mercy, generated the whole bit.

    Why it works

    Once the audience learns the rule they start predicting it, and each hit pays off twice: the surprise of the new word and the pleasure of having seen it coming.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    My landlord says every repair takes "one more week," so I now date things in landlord weeks: the faucet got fixed in late March, which in real time was August.

    Try it

    Find a phrase someone in your life repeats, turn it into a strict rule, then apply that rule to three ordinary things in a row, each one a bit more absurd.

  4. 4. Sing it like a nursery rhyme

    What they did

    Lehrer sat at the piano with a bright, bouncing accompaniment and an unbothered face while singing about things like poisoning pigeons in the park. Westword says audiences sometimes didn't know whether to laugh or be appalled.

    Why it works

    Tone and content pull in opposite directions, and the listener's brain has to resolve the clash. The sweeter the delivery, the darker the subject can go before it stops being funny.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    In my best kindergarten-teacher voice: today we're going to count everyone who hit reply-all on the 'please stop replying all' email. Get your fingers ready, and borrow your neighbor's.

    Try it

    Take the most annoying fact in your story and deliver it in the gentlest voice you own, slow and smiling, with no change of tone at the punchline.

  5. 5. Give the boring parts a sound

    What they did

    Borge's Phonetic Punctuation read a passage aloud with a different silly noise for each comma, period and question mark. The Associated Press, in its December 2000 obituary, singled it out among the gags that made him famous.

    Why it works

    It makes something nobody notices impossible to ignore, and the repetition builds: by the third mark the audience is waiting for the noise more than the words.

    Example (original, written by Shutap)

    I read my landlord's three-paragraph email out loud and gave every 'per my last message' its own slammed-door sound effect. There were five doors.

    Try it

    Take a dull text you received (a policy, a group-chat rule, a passive-aggressive email) and assign one sound to its most repeated phrase. Read it straight.

Before you quote them

Westword's ranking shows no author or date on the page, so the dated basis here is Paste's 2015 list and the profiles cited below. Paste says its 20 entries run in no particular order, so Yankovic's last-place position there is not a rank. Lyrics of the parodied songs are left out on purpose; only titles are named.

Questions people ask

Who is the funniest musician?
"Weird Al" Yankovic is the name that comes up most. Westword ranks him No. 1 among comedic musicians, ahead of Tom Lehrer, and Paste's 2015 list of musical comedians ends with him, saying no list would be complete without him. No formal poll exists.
Who else is considered a funny musician?
Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained math teacher who wrote about three dozen satirical songs, is second on Westword's list. Victor Borge, the Danish pianist whose Broadway show Comedy in Music ran 849 performances, appears on Paste's list, as do Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D on Westword's.
What are Weird Al's best-known songs?
"Eat It" (1984), his take on Michael Jackson's "Beat It," reached No. 12 and won a Grammy for Best Comedy Recording. "My Bologna" (1979) was his first single, and "Word Crimes" (2014) made the Top 40 from Mandatory Fun, the first comedy album to debut at No. 1.
Did Weird Al really call his Walk of Fame star "my one real shot at immortality"?
Yes. City News Service, as published by NBC Los Angeles, reported the line from the August 27, 2018 ceremony, where Yankovic received the 2,643rd star on Hollywood Boulevard with Dr. Demento and actor Thomas Lennon beside him.
What kind of humor did Victor Borge use?
Musical slapstick and wordplay. The Associated Press obituary in December 2000 recalled his phonetic punctuation, his falls off the piano bench and his habit of playing music upside down; his Inflationary Language routine turned "wonderful" into "twoderful."

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Sources

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