Nearly half of the album is made up of parodies based on the works of Toni Basil, The Arrows, Stevie Nicks, the Knack and Queen.

Critically, the album received a lukewarm reception, with many reviewers feeling that Yankovic was a throw-away act who would not be able to overcome the stigma of a novelty record.

Agreeing, Derringer used his music industry prestige and convinced Cherokee Studios to record an album's worth of Yankovic's songs gratis, to be paid from sales revenue.

"After encountering difficulty picking up a record label for the first-time album, Jay Levey (a Los Angeles artists' manager) provided KIQQ-FM with a copy of "I Love Rocky Road".

Impressing the program director of the Top 40 station, he played it immediately; "I Love Rocky Road" was one of the most-requested songs by the next day.

The positive furor over the KIQQ playtest provided Dowd with the leverage needed to convince Scotti Bros. to offer a contract for Yankovic's first album.

[6][8][2] To promote the album, Levey coordinated a three-week tour in late Summer 1983 across the United States' East Coast and Midwest for both Yankovic and Dr. Demento.

[16] He would later perform a parody of "Jack & Diane" titled "Homer and Marge" for a 2003 episode of The Simpsons called "Three Gays of the Condo".

[17] "Such a Groovy Guy" parodies narcissism specifically noting fashion, demeanor, dominance and submission, and relationship breakup.

[19] "Yoda", Yankovic's parody of the Kinks' song "Lola", was written in 1980 (during the initial theatre run of The Empire Strikes Back) and was a "huge hit" on The Dr. Demento Show.

Eugene Chadbourne, reviewer for AllMusic, felt that while "Weird Al" Yankovic was a detailed harbinger of parody to come, the album does not hold up well on its own.

However, also according to Chadbourne, "Ricky" lacks the comedic connection Yankovic cultivates in later albums, and the original songs "may not seem like they were written in ten minutes, but the ideas behind them don't seem to involve that much contemplation.

[7] Reviewing Yankovic in 2008, Brian Raftery of Wired magazine wrote that "Ricky" introduced the world to "an accordion-playing spaz with a coif like Rick James and a voice like an urgent goose."