So yeah....for some reason a lot of people seem to think Weird Al wrote "Barney's On Fire". High praise, but it is simply not true.

Back in 1993, I was watching David Letterman and a skit came on about the new cable show "Fireplace Full Of Barneys". The song came very shortly after! I featured it on my album Mommy's Got A Migraine. I had it released to usenet and sent free to anyone that asked (all 10 of them). Usenet archives still have the posting if you go spelunking.

In June of 1994, after a lot of positive feedback and prodding, I submitted the song to the Doctor Demento Show. The Good Doctor played the song on his July 10, 1994 show (and again on the July 17, 1994 show). It was the third song broadcast, after "Take Off: by the McKenzie Brothers, and "Be Prepared" by Tom Lehrer. More high praise!! Interestingly, he added a Barney sound effect to the end of it, and trimmed out the keyboard solo.

After that I released one more tape over usenet, and then made a "best of" CD. That done, I stopped writing music for a very long time. Napster rolled along, and was bombarded by thousands of songs attributed to Weird Al, but not actually by him. Barney's On Fire was included, and was thus massively traded around as such. A frighteningly complete list of these "Not By Al" songs are available here: http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/notbyal.html

Eventually people made videos, posted to youtube, got millions of views, and the rest is history. I've never made a cent off of these :(

What fascinates me is the amount of denial that I wrote the damn thing. It doesn't even sound like Al! OK maybe a little.