FEW WOULD HAVE GUESSED that “Weird Al” Yankovic – who as a shy, accordion-playing teenager got his start sending homemade tapes in to the Dr. Demento Radio Show – would go on to become the biggest-selling comedy recording artist in history and a pop culture icon.   Now in his fourth career decade as America’s foremost song parodist, he has been honored with four Grammy® Awards and fifteen nominations, including his most recent win in 2015 for Mandatory Fun, the first-ever comedy album in history to debut at #1 on the Billboard charts, capping a career’s worth of accolades for classic song and music video parodies such as “Eat It,” “Like a Surgeon,” “Smells Like Nirvana,” “Amish Paradise,” “White & Nerdy” and “Tacky.”

Following his wildly successful 2015 Mandatory World Tour, traveling to more than 100 cities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia, the tour continues beginning on June 3, with Yankovic bringing his high-energy comedy rock show to another 80 cities across North America including New York City’s Radio City Music Hall and two nights at the legendary Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles where he will be performing with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Mandatory Fun debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart, the first time a comedy album debuted at #1 and the first time a comedy album reached the top of the chart in more than 50 years (the last one being Allan Sherman’s 1963 release My Son, the Nut).  On Spotify, Yankovic set the U.S. record for having the most tracks from one album in the viral top 10 at one time, taking the first four spots.  Internationally, the album debuted in the Top 10 in both Canada and Australia (#3 and #9 respectively).  In addition, ”Word Crimes” debuted in the Billboard Top 40, making Al one of only three people to have had Top 40 singles in each of the last four decades, the other two being Michael Jackson and Madonna.

For Mandatory Fun, Al released eight music videos (“Tacky,” “Word Crimes,” “Foil,” “Handy,” “Sports Song,” “Lame Claim to Fame,” “First World Problems” and “Mission Statement”) across eight days, resulting in more than 46 million views combined in its first week.  For the videos he teamed up with various production partners such as Nerdist Industries, CollegeHumor, Yahoo!, Funny Or Die and TruScribe, as well as talented auteurs like Liam Lynch, Jarrett Heather and Tim Thompson.