Synopsis

"Weird Al" Yankovic turns the theme song from his 1989 film UHF into a rapid-fire tour through the golden age of music videos. Yankovic and his band perform amid clips from the movie, presenting a fictional television station as a place where anything can happen. The video jumps between broad station imagery and affectionate send-ups of iconic clips by artists including Prince, George Michael, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Robert Palmer, Billy Idol, ZZ Top, Guns N' Roses, and INXS.

Factoids & Trivia

• The song is an original composition rather than a parody, and it served as the lead single from the UHF soundtrack.

• The video was made as a stand-alone production, unlike "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies," whose video appears within the film itself.

• Its visual concept is unusually ambitious for Yankovic's work at the time, combining movie footage with a long sequence of separate music-video parodies.

• The artists and videos referenced include Prince's "When Doves Cry" and "1999," George Michael's "Faith," Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love," ZZ Top's "Legs," Billy Idol's "White Wedding" and "Rebel Yell," INXS' "Mediate," and Randy Newman's "I Love L.A."

• The opening titles deliberately copy the style of the James Bond film Thunderball. Yankovic later said Disney objected to that material being used in the music video, even though the same idea remained in the movie.

• The song had been written several years earlier for a proposed Saturday Night Live replacement project called Welcome to the Fun Zone before being repurposed for UHF.

• "UHF" became a recurring concert opener for Yankovic, helping the song survive beyond its original soundtrack context.