One of my favorites has always been Rice, Rice, Gravy making fun of Vanilla Ice’s Ice, Ice, Baby. I also love Weird Al’s Amish Paradise. In Living Color has had some great song parodies as well. What do you think is the best song parody of all time?
A group called Extempo did a wonderful parody of Isn’t it Ironic? by Alanis Morissette, called Isn’t it Bionic? It’s basically a Paean to the 70s T.V. show “The Bionic Man” and all the spinoffs (they even get Max the Bionic Dog in there).
Barry
Not a specific song parody, but Chris Morris’ “Motherbanger” is so good a style parody of The Pixies it’s almost scary.
Allan Sherman was the king of the song parody. I suppose his best known was "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (Letter From Camp)’, which was a parody of Amilcare Ponchielli’s “Dance Of The Hours”.
Next to Sherman, there was Frank Jacobs, who created hundreds of song parodies in Mad Magazine and made the use of them legal.
And don’t forget Spike Jones, who parodied a lot of classical pieces.
I have a few thoughts on song parodies. The good ones, I think, parody two things at once, the original song and the subject matter; so it’s hard to pull off. First of all, as for any parody, you really have to know what you’re talking about; when you only have one or two things to say about it, it shows. Picking the right song is important. You want something with lots of lyrics, and ideally not too long of a chorus, because you shouldn’t be repeating yourself too much. For this reason, songs from musicals are great - especially that ubiquitous Major-General’s theme song. It’s also really hard to make sad music work as a parody. I personally think it’s a really good idea to include little snippets of the original lyrics here and there without overdoing it. Some parodies either completely ignore the original lyrics and use only the melody, while some use the original lyrics except for just a few words. Parodies with lyricless songs, like classical pieces, can’t do this; I really consider them more “parodies set to music” than “song parodies” I guess.
I think Weird Al best lives up to what I like, although you can see I have some pretty specific ideas about it. “The Saga Begins” and “All About the Pentiums” are his best parodies, IMHO.
I vote for Negativland’s demolition of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.
Amish Paradise, All about the Pentiums, Smells Like Nirvana.
“The Devil Went Down To Jamaica” by David Allen Coe.
It’s a parody of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” By Charlie Daniels.
I always liked Cheech Marin’s “Born in East L.A.”
From a craft standpoint, I think Weird Al’s “The Saga Begins” is as good a parody as he ever did.
Don’t forget Walt Kelly’s classic carol, “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” … the only song parody to be the topic of a column by Cecil.
I have a fondness for Kelly’s others carols, as well:
::: singing :::
Good king Saurkraut, look out!
On your feet, uneven.
Weird Al is a pretty good parody artist, especially on songs like Smells like Teen Spirit where the beat of song is there, and the lyrics aren’t directly taken from the originial ones yet sound similar. The same with The Saga Begins, but less so with the actual music and more so to the rhythm of the originial song.
Weird Al did a song, I’m not sure if it’s a parody of anything except the whole Star Trek genre, and I can only recall a little snippet: “Klingons on the forward bow, forward bow, forward bow, Klingons on the forward bow, SCRAPE 'EM OFF, JIM!!” But I used to roll every time I heard it.
I love Weird Al’s parody of Greg Kihn’s “Our love’s in Jeopardy”
(“I lost on Jeopardy”)
Like many others, I’ll go with the stuff made by Weird Al Yankovic, except I think his best are “Spam,” a parody of “Stand” by R.E.M., and “Gump,” a parody of “Lump” by the Presidents of the United States of America.
I think Weird Al’s most clever to date would be “Bob”.
It’s not exactly a copy of anything, just a dead-on parody of Bob Dylan’s lyrical, musical and vocal style. And it passes the key test: does it make people who LOVE the song/person/band being parodied laugh a lot?
LC
I had forgotten about him - thanks for the reminder!
I can still remember most of the words to “Goodbye, Julie”, a song about Julius Caesar’s assassination done to the tune of “Hello, Dolly”. Hysterical stuff.
There was a National Lampoon album many years ago, sorry I can’t recall the name, but it was chock full 'o evil parodies. My favorite was one of John Lennon called Magical Misery Tour. It started:
“I resent performing for you f@ckcers, tell me what do you know…”
and ended with screams of "genius is paaaiiiiiin!’
Just hilarious.
Oh, it also had a great Bob Dylan one:
“the spangled dwarf with his bow-tie
the infantry that don’t ask why…”.
If you want a really good parody of Bob Dylan, check out Neil Innes’ “Protest Song”…
Speaking of Neil Innes, how can we forget The Rutles?
“Ouch! You’re breaking my heart…”