| "Jurassic Park" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by "Weird Al" Yankovic | ||||
| from the album Alapalooza | ||||
| B-side | "Frank's 2000" TV" | |||
| Released | October 1993 | |||
| Recorded | July 16, 1993 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:53 | |||
| Label | Scotti Brothers | |||
| Songwriter(s) | ||||
| Producer(s) | "Weird Al" Yankovic | |||
| "Weird Al" Yankovic singles chronology | ||||
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| Music video | ||||
| "Jurassic Park" on YouTube | ||||
"Jurassic Park" is a parody of Richard Harris's version of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park", written and performed by "Weird Al" Yankovic; it was released both as a single and as part of Yankovic's Alapalooza album in October 1993. "Jurassic Park" was penned by Yankovic after he remembered the enjoyment he had when he combined a classic rock track with a recent movie theme with his 1985 song "Yoda". Yankovic decided to combine the plot of the recent movie Jurassic Park—a film about a park on a fictional island where geneticists have succeeded in cloning dinosaurs—with the classic Richard Harris track "MacArthur Park".
The song was paired with an elaborately animated music video, which was created by Mark Osborne and Scott Nordlund almost entirely via claymation. The video did not receive extensive play on MTV, although it was popular on The Box, VH1, and in Canada, where it was played on MuchMusic. The video, due to its animation, also later went on to be praised at various animation festivals worldwide.
"Jurassic Park" was met with mixed to positive reviews; while many reviewers enjoyed Yankovic's humor, others felt that the song did not satirize the source material, but instead merely recounted the plot to the movie. Webb himself was very pleased with the final result and has been known to sing the parody lyrics in concert. Although the single did not chart in the United States, it peaked at number 5 on the Canadian magazine The Record's single chart. The video was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video at the 37th Grammy Awards, although it did not win.