Song #532: "Eat It" by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Date: April 1, 1984
Weeks: 1

"Eat It" was Weird Al's first big hit, and it's a great song. It's about a parent trying to get their kid to eat something. It's basically a funny list of things the kid could be eating. It's clever and never fails to crack me up.

The one lyric that makes me scratch my head is "Don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan?" That kind of guilt is a classic gambit by the parent trying to get their kid to eat, but was there a time when hunger was an issue in Japan? I've heard of parents using China in this argument, and Africa was popular when I was young, but Japan? I suspect he may have fudged the lyrics there to make a rhyme.

The music is uniformly excellent, with a great guitar backing the whole track. That guitar goes nuts in the bridge and then literally explodes.That's good stuff.

I do kind of take issue with the funny little hand-fart noises that pepper the song. They seem like a pretty cheap joke, and they kind of don't fit. I know earlier in his career, Weird Al had a lot of goofy sound effects backing him up, but by this time he seemed to be making more genuine music, so they're kind of an unwelcome throwback.

My verdict: Like It. This set the tone for the rest of Weird Al's career, and it's a ton of fun.