Half of the album is made up of parodies of artists like Michael Jackson, Men Without Hats, the Greg Kihn Band, the Police, and Survivor.

The other half of the album contains many "style parodies", musical imitations that come close to but do not directly copy a specific work by existing artists.

This album marked a musical departure from Yankovic's self-titled debut, in that the arrangements of the parodies were now closer to the originals.

A similar pastiche of hit songs, set to polka music, has since appeared on nearly all of Yankovic's albums.

The album also produced one of Yankovic's most famous singles, "Eat It" (a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It"), which peaked at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100.

This song was Yankovic's highest-charting single until "White & Nerdy" from his 2006 album Straight Outta Lynwood peaked at number nine in the October 21, 2006 Billboard charts.

The album was Yankovic's first Gold record, and went on to be certified Platinum for sales of over one million copies in the United States.

[3] Backing Yankovic were Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz on drums, Steve Jay on bass, and Jim West on guitar.

[2] Every song on Yankovic's debut album was played on an accordion, accompanied by bass, guitar, and drums.

The liner notes to Permanent Record state that a Weekly World News article about the "Incredible Frog Boy" helped to inspire the song.

[5] Musically, it is a style parody of the B-52s,[5] which Robert Christgau wrote "exploits Yankovic's otherwise fatal resemblance to Fred Schneider.

In 2009, Kihn wrote a blog on his MySpace called "Weird Al and Mailbox Money", in which he complimented Yankovic's comedy and explained the mechanics of how a parody works.

Yankovic formulated the idea during a brainstorming session between himself, Robert K. Weiss, and his manager, Jay Levey.

[16] Musically, the parody is slightly different from the original, being set in a changed key,[17] comic sound effects, and an Eddie Van Halen-inspired guitar solo from Yankovic's producer, Rick Derringer.

[4] "Eat It" was Yankovic's first—and, until "Smells Like Nirvana" (1992), his only—Top Forty hit, peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100.

by the Normal, "Bad Boys Get Spanked" by the Pretenders, "TV Party" by Black Flag, "Janitor" by Suburban Lawns, and "People Who Died" by Jim Carroll.

"[6] Some critics were split on how Yankovic composed, performed, and recorded his parodies, compared to his 1983 debut album.

The Daily Vault commented thus: Parody-wise, Yankovic still always managed to throw a different loop into the music to make it sound different than the song it was based on.

As a result, "Theme From Rocky XIII" doesn't have the crispness as the original song from Survivor did, "The Brady Bunch" is sped up (in both tempo and pitch) from Men Without Hats's "The Safety Dance", and "Eat It" takes Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and raises the pitch.

"Eat It" eventually sold over a half a million copies, peaked at number twelve domestically on the Billboard Hot 100, and was certified Gold.