Party in the CIA

Album: Alpocalypse (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song about a CIA operative parodies Miley Cyrus' single, "Party in the U.S.A., "turning it into a covert operations party. Yankovic knew from when it was first played on the radio that it had potential to be lampooned. He told Artist Direct: "That's one of those songs where once it became a huge hit, I thought, 'This might be good for me to make fun of.' I was looking at variations on a theme. I make lists of possible song concepts, and 99% of them are pretty bad, but for the one that works, I'm like, 'Aha, that's it!' When I came up with 'Party in the C.I.A.,' I thought it was the right tone because the Miley Cyrus song is your typical bubblegum track. It's fluffy and bright. It's a good summer song, but it's certainly not dark and twisted like mine is now. It was a good way to invert the tone and make this happy carefree song a bit more dark."
  • The animated video was directed by Roque Ballesteros who works at Ghost Bot. Al told Consequence of Sound: "That's the same company that worked on stuff like Happy Tree Friends and they've done some very cool stylistic commercials. Happy Tree Friends are these cute, little animal characters that have extremely violent adventures, and since this video is supposed to be sort of an ultra-violent version of a fluff pop song, I thought it would be a good pairing."
  • Alpocalypse debuted at #9 on the Billboard 200, the highest position of Yankovic's career. His previous best had been the #10 peak of his 2006 set, Straight Outta Lynwood.

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