“Weird Al” Yankovich has made a living of turning pop hits into parody songs that often became pop hits in themselves. He decided to do a new song based on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” called “Perform This Way,” which he planned to be the lead single for his new album. Unfortunately, Lady Gage choosen not to grant permission through her manager to release this song on the album. (Which is ironic since Lady Gaga is often accused of recycling Madonna’s entire career without permission.) Although his songs fall under the fair use provision of the copyright law, he had always requested permission before releasing a song based on another artist’s work. Since he didn’t want his work to go to waste, he released the video on YouTube with the full lyrics for everyone to enjoy yesterday.

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Later in the afternoon, after a tremendous outpouring from the Internet, it turned out that Lady Gaga wasn’t aware of the song because her manager never told her about it and granted Weird Al approval to release the song on his album (coming out in June). It’s a catchy song. I’m looking forward to the actual music video to see how outrageous Weird Al can outdo Lady Gaga in the costume department.