 On February 21 , 1985 , Yankovic began recording the parodies for Dare to Be Stupid . The first parody recorded for the album was " Yoda " . " Yoda " was originally written by Yankovic during the initial run of the 1980 American film The Empire Strikes Back . After the success of the movie , Yankovic toyed with the idea of writing a song based on the break @-@ out character , but was unable to find a suitable song to use as the base . Yankovic remembers , " I was still in college at the time , and a friend of mine named Mike suggested that I do the song to the tune of ' Lola ' — which I couldn 't believe that I hadn 't thought of myself , since I was such a huge Kinks fan . " Yankovic wrote and recorded a version of the song , using only an accordion , on a four @-@ track cassette Portastudio . This version of " Yoda " was a hit on the " Dr. Demento Show " , and even managed to hit , and hold onto , number one on the Funny Five countdown for several weeks . This early demo was later released on one of Dr. Demento 's Basement Tapes . 
