Cameron Adams talks with Weird Al Yankovic about parodies, downloading and Wikipedia.

Your new album Straight Outta Lynwood  was delayed by James Blunt. Discuss.

The original version had my James Blunt parody You're Pitiful on it. That didn't work out. It took me a few months to regroup and come up with a couple of other songs to replace.

Did you want to parody You're Beautiful automatically?

Absolutely. It's one of those songs you think "Man, something has to be done with this". As it turns out that's my job, so I did it.

So who shut the song down?

James had no problem with it. He approved it and gave it his blessing. Then we got a call from Atlantic Records, his label. They felt a James Blunt parody would be hurtful to him at this point in his career because he's a developing artist. They didn't want any more attention drawn to You're Beautiful because they didn't want that song to get bigger than James. They didn't want him to become a one-hit wonder and any more attention on that song would be bad for his career. I don't agree with that, but that's why they told me not to do it.

And you agreed?

Well, legally I could have probably done it anyway, but I tend to avoid any confrontation or any situation where my record label might have to go to war with their record label.

It's still on your myspace page www.myspace.com/weirdal . . .

That's a grey area legally. It's not on my official website any more, I've got links to it, but it's not on my site. It's not the kind of thing I'd have done in a million years if James Blunt himself had a problem with it, but because a bunch of suits at his label weren't acting in their artist's best interest I didn't have any problem with it.

In the video for your new single White and Nerdy, you attack Atlantic's page on Wikipedia and write "You suck!"

That's a freeze-frame gag. You'd have to pause it on that particular shot but a lot of fans have got a kick out of that.

And now Atlantic Records' page on Wikipedia has been frozen because of "vandalism" . . .

I don't officially approve of that, but on a certain level it does amuse me.

One of your new tracks Don't Download This Song revives the cheesy charity-song genre.

I was trying to get in cheesy mode and I played a lot of those '80s songs like We Are the World, Hands Across America and Do They Know It's Christmas and tried to soak in that vibe -- revel in the cheese of it all.

It's a tongue-in-cheek statement on downloading music.

My own personal feelings towards downloading are kind of ambiguous in the lyrics. People have gleaned totally different messages from the song. Some people think the title is totally ironic. Some people take it at face value. Again, it's a grey area for me.

You sing, "Don't take away money from artists like me . . . diamond-studded swimming pools, these things don't grow on trees".

I don't necessarily condone the illegal downloading of songs, but at the same time the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been too heavy-handed in their response. They're criminalising common people who happen to have files on their computers they're sharing with other people. Whether that's right or wrong, it seems like there should be a better response.

Websites now list parody songs being shared online that are attributed to you, which you didn't write. Is that annoying?

It is, because most of the songs attributed to me are pretty bad. Some of them are pretty vulgar as well. My audience is pretty family-friendly. I appeal to a lot of kids. A lot of parents feel safe buying my albums for their children. When they hear stuff like this on the internet that's crude or vulgar, they think, "Oh, I thought Al was clean comedy. I can't buy his stuff for my kids any more". As it turns out, it's not even me.

And they like them so much they're downloading them free.

Right. They're hooligans on top of it.

The new album also parodies R Kelly's musical soap-opera Trapped in the Closet on Trapped in the Drive Thru. Was that song too ridiculous to not parody?

That was actually a tough call. I wanted to do something with it, but the other part of me thought, "How on earth am I going to do anything with this because it's so ridiculous already?" So I decided rather than trying to make it more bizarre or convoluted I'd try to make it as mundane and trivial and banal as possible, but still keep the drama.

Fewer artists are doing songs as ridiculous as that. Is it more difficult to find songs to parody now?

It seems like there are fewer and fewer real targets, fewer candidates for parody that would make sense. That makes my job a little more difficult.

You've parodied Usher . . .

I did Confessions Part 3. When I listened to parts one and two I thought Usher was holding back on some confessions. I just thought I'd save him the trouble by doing the sequel.

You've found your inner R&B star on this album; parodying Usher, Chamillionaire, R Kelly. That should bring in some new fans.

I don't do R&B too much, but it's kind of a departure for me. My career goes in cycles. I'm very hot for a few months, then it dies down. Then my career goes into hibernation and people forget about me and I'll come back in a few years. A whole new generation discovers me with every album. A 12-year-old will pick up this record and get into it and be amazed to know I have 11 other albums in the back catalogue.

What happened with your Eminem parody?

He said yes to the song on the record, but no to the video.

Which is weird, looking at his videos.

A lot of his videos seem to be reminiscent of a lot of my videos. And it seems he makes fun of so many other people in his videos he shouldn't have too much of a problem when the tables are turned. He was just afraid, I guess, that a Weird Al video would take away his street cred. Again, I don't understand the logic there, but I had to respect his feelings.

Your fans raised $15,000 to try to get you a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

It's really touching, but part of me feels a bit strange because there are certainly better causes people could be raising money for, but I'm extremely flattered. To think I have fans who think that highly of me they'd go to all the time and trouble of raising that money means more to me than any chunk of concrete on the sidewalk.

Straight Outta Lynwood (Sony BMG) is out now.