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Music

"Weird Al" Is Rivers Cuomo in Weezer's Very Familiar Video for "Africa"

With the shot-for-shot "Sweater Song" remake, the meme has begun to consume its own delicious tail.

The Weezer-cover-"Africa" cycle, a dream-come-true for one hero-child and an unexpected source of joy for soft-rock enjoyers everywhere, has sustained itself largely because Weezer have so gleefully bought into the joke. They teased the internet with a cover of Toto's "Rosanna" before finally blessing the rains; they then invited Toto's Steve Pocaro to play "Africa" with them on Kimmel; they seem to have made good buddies with their yacht-rock-adjacent forebears along the way. I figured that it would have somehow turned into a lightning rod for the culture wars by now; somehow they've sustained the joke and make it stranger at every turn.

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Now they've released the official video for "Africa," and there are yet more layers to peel back. It has "Weird Al" Yankovic starring as Rivers Cuomo in a shot-for-shot remake of the video to Weezer's Blue Album hit "Undone — The Sweater Song." It means that a Twitter joke started by a 14-year-old kid now involves a beloved parodist who's been around since the mid-70s, a song released in 1981, and a video that came out in 1994.

Enjoy one of the three good things the internet has ever done at the top of the page.

Follow Alex Robert Ross on Twitter.