Lasagna (song)
# Lasagna (song)

"Lasagna" is a song by "Weird Al" Yankovic. It is a parody of "La Bamba", a traditional song popularized by Ritchie Valens and Los Lobos.

## Track listing

* "Lasagna" – 2:45
* "Velvet Elvis" – 4:27

## Writing and release

When Yankovic began writing the song, he claimed:

   My original thought for this was to record the entire song in Italian. I was actually going through Italian phrase books and dictionaries until I realized that the humor would be lost on 99% of the audience, so I decided to do the whole thing in English but with kind of a bad Italian accent.

Under U.S. law, Yankovic can parody any song as long as he pays royalties to use the original music. However, as a personal rule, he asks for permission in order to maintain good relations with the industry. This song is an exception to that rule. Although it is a parody of the Los Lobos cover version (in turn a faithful cover of Ritchie Valens's version, though Valens had died in 1959), "Lasagna" marked Yankovic's first parody that did not require permission from an artist or a payment of royalties, since "La Bamba" is a traditional folk song that is not attributed to any specific writer.

The single was released exclusively in Japan as a mini 3" CD single.

## Music video

There is no full-length music video for this single, though a shortened music video segment was shown in 1997 as a part of The Weird Al Show.

* The video features a stereotypical Italian family, including an elderly woman, two children, a rather large man for "Cousin Luigi" and Yankovic (sans glasses) as the father.
* When the line "A-don't you get any on ya, you sloppy pig" is sung, the elderly woman at the dinner table drops the lasagna into Luigi's lap.
* After "Have-a more ravioli" is sung, two children catch ravioli in their mouth.
* Near the end, lasagna is falling out of Luigi's mouth.
* The elderly woman and one of the children fight over the lasagna near the end.
* At the end, the family does a dance. First they simply wave from side to side with their hands on each other's shoulders while still seated. Then, they stand up from their chairs, which move off-screen, as does the table. Yankovic takes his plate of lasagna off the table. They all do a can can-type dance as confetti and balloons fall from the ceiling, and at the cheering section at the end, the others gather around Yankovic as he holds out his plate proudly.

## Italian dishes mentioned in "Lasagna"

Yankovic names many Italian dishes in "Lasagna", including:

* Lasagna
* Spaghetti
* Calzone
* Minestrone
* Marinara
* Linguini
* Fettuccine
* Ravioli

## In popular culture

"Lasagna" is heard playing on a radio in a cave scene in the 2010 film Yogi Bear.

In the second-season episode of NBC's drama This Is Us entitled "The Car", the Pearson family sings the song to calm mom Rebecca's (Mandy Moore) nerves as they cross a bridge on the way to a Yankovic concert.

