"Weird Al" Yankovic Joins Weezer On Stage For "Africa"

'Weird Al' Yankovic joined Weezer on stage to perform their popular cover of Toto's 'Africa,' and [...]

"Weird Al" Yankovic joined Weezer on stage to perform their popular cover of Toto's "Africa," and the internet is predictably captivated by it.

Yankovic, best known for his parodies of popular songs and fresh off a tour of his own, posted a video of the two minutes or so he spent on stage with the band to Twitter.

You can see the tweet, which also features Yankovic on accordion and Rivers Cuomo on guitar squaring off to "shred" on their instruments at the end, below.

For those of you who are thinking it: no, this is not the first time (by a long shot) that Yankovic has performed a song without transforming it into a parody. On his last tour, he and his band covered a different popular song in their encores each night -- 77 in total.

Even before that, Yankovic's albums have customarily featured a polka that mashes up a number of popular songs in polka style, leaving the lyrics intact -- although, as in this video, he only plays pieces of each one.

According to Rolling Stone, the "Africa" cover which has become a staple of Weezer's tour came about after a fan (we presume ironically...?) created a Twitter account specifically to request they perform the cover live, over and over again for months.

When they finally did, the song went to the top of the singles chart because that's just the surrealist entertainment landscape of 2018.

...Well, just to make things extra weird, first they covered "Rosanna," the other big hit by Toto, seemingly just to troll the teenage fan who had spent months harassing them about "Africa."

The band is currently on tour in support of Pacific Daydream, their latest album. They have been accompanied on the road by The Pixies, a band which critics immediately pointed to as an influence on Weezer's debut album decades ago.

The popularity of the "Africa" cover has gotten so big that Toto responded by covering Weezer's "Hash Pipe."

"We figured since we were smoking hash since before they were born, that's the one we should do," Toto guitarist Steve Lukather told an audience in Vancouver earlier this year. "This is our tribute to Weezer. God bless 'em."

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