Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘Eat It’ Released In 4K
On the back of his parody biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe, and in the run up to the 40th anniversary of “Thriller,” comedy music artist Weird Al Yankovic has released his classic “Eat It” video in 4K on YouTube.
The 1984 song is a parody of Michael Jackson’s 1983 single “Beat It” with the lyrics changed to be about eating lots of food. The track was both a commercial success, even earning Yankovic a Grammy Award. It also gave him his first top 40 hit in the USA. When Yankovic on reviewing the lyrics, Michael thought it was amusing and therefore agreed to allow the parody.
The music video for “Eat It” is an almost shot-for-shot remake of Michael’s original “Beat It.” Down to the outfit and famous red jacket Yankovic wears, the only real differences is the silly performing for comedy effect. The video also features a few of the same dancers from the original video. At the end Yankovic looks into the camera with yellow eyes, same as how the “Thriller” short film ends. Michael received royalties from Yankovic for rights to cover the video so closely, as well as for the song itself being a co-writer.
The reason behind the restoration is due to need for it to be seen in the new movie. The version that existed wasn’t good enough quality. So Yankovic went into his personal video vault and had all the original 16mm film that was shot for the video in 1983 transferred to 4K. Then, while traveling the country on his 2022 tour, he painstakingly re-edited the video on his laptop, matching the original video frame for frame. The resulting video is not without scratches and artifacts (even in a temperature-controlled storage unit, film will start to degrade after a few decades) but it is exponentially better quality than any version that has ever existed before.”
