Touring in Australia, Al was inspired. With some metric manipulation, he realized, “Born This Way” could become “Perform This Way,” and the song could be rewritten to parody Gaga’s outlandish glam. It was a fun idea: an anthemic statement about Gaga’s genre of anthemic statements. Weird Al had an album coming out in a few months, though, and he had to write the parody fast. So (at least according to an account he gave to The New York Times), on the same night the thought occurred to him, he wrote the parody’s lyrics.

Weird Al did something else, too, that he always does when writing a new parody. That is, his people got in touch with Gaga’s people. He wanted the new lyrics to have her blessing. While fair use permits Al to create and release any spoof—parodies are expressly protected in U.S. law—he’s always sought an artist’s permission first.

Gaga’s people said they needed to hear the song. Al thought this sounded strange—it was their song!—but he rushed through a recording. He recorded it. He sent it to them.

They said no.

Gaga said no.

Or, at least, that’s what Al was told. He uploaded “Perform This Way” to YouTube with a sad, somewhat confused explanation. He wanted to release the song on his upcoming album, he said, but without Gaga’s blessing he wouldn’t.

But what YouTube wrought! As print and online outlets alike rushed to cover the parody, Gaga’s people announced they were in the wrong. Her manager had declined the parodist without ever running “Perform This Way”’s existence by Gaga herself. She more than approved the song, she loved it. “Perform This Way” could appear on the album Alpocalype, released that June.

Pop was saved.

Looking back, the parable seems the epitome of 2011-ness. There’s Gaga, there’s buzz about a song posted to YouTube!, there’s a flurry of articles in the wake of both. (Some things, I suppose, have yet to change.)

There’s something redeeming about the whole episode, too. Web technology permits what wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. YouTube let Weird Al announce and distribute “Perform This Way” for free, delivering it to middle-schoolers and Gaga herself alike. Weird Al relied on YouTube, placed himself in the role of the lone amateur, and brought about a better mass-cultural outcome. Produced pop goes online, professional borrows the tool of amateur, and everyone seems to win.

* * *

But perhaps the best evidence of Al’s membership in entertainment's ancien regime is this: Just as it feels a little odd to academically, familial-ly, call Elvis “Presley”—he’s Elvis, like Ringo’s Ringo—we’re on a first-name, broadcast-intimate basis with Al. It feels disrespectful to call him “Yankovic,” like we don’t get the joke somehow. The Economist can call him Yankovic. To us, he’s Al—like Beyoncé’s properly Beyoncé.

No wonder, then, that this week Al has mimicked the tactics of the preeminent Knowles. From last Monday to this upcoming one, he released a new music video every day, eight videos in total. There are few songs on his new album that will lack a video, meaning that, in medium and marketing, he’s pulling a sort of time-extended Yoncé.