Take my advice, and you can decide who to parody as wisely as I do.
Below is a list of artists I have parodying experiences with more than one album by, and what I have to say about whether I would recommend them to other parodists. However, what I can put on this page is limited by how many works I know by each artist. For example, while I have certainly come to associate REO Speedwagon with easy, basic songs, I only have a fraction of what they did (two albums, to be exact), and so can only speak for those.
When an album by an artist I like is not appearing in my music library, it is usually due to a simple lack of exposure or certainty that I want to chase after it, but some albums are not there for a reason. This is explained whenever it is the case.
Some of the most and least parody friendly songs I know are by Green Day. They have done things that are easy to parody period, and their 2016 release Revolution Radio has the distinction of being the one album I have ever used that gave me the most to work with. But by contrast, another album of theirs, 21st Century Breakdown is my standard reference for what a parodist does not want in a song. They seem to have hit about everything in between, too.
Green Day songs have some common themes, which include time-wasting, intoxicating substances of all sorts and, in their later albums, protest songs, but they have covered so many different topics in one song or another that it is difficult to come up with a broad generalization, except that none of it was ordinary subjects for popular songs. They may appeal to parodists who get tired of using love songs, or want a distinctive personality to work with, but mind the cutoff point where they become too troublesome.
Finally, a word on song length. Green Day can be notable at points for combining themes from across an album to form a track that is really several songs in one. As a result, three of the four longest songs I have ever done were by them. However, the next longest Green Day song I have done is Outlaws, which only barely stretches across the 5-minute mark. So, while major exceptions exist, Green Day songs are not usually very long, a fact clearly reflected by the fact that they also did eight of the ten shortest songs I have used. It is not uncommon for a Green Day song to be less than three minutes long. They can, however, cram lots of lyrics in a short amount of time, as they do not have the tendency toward long instrumental sections that many artists in the 1970s and 80s had.
I am fairly familiar with the timeline of studio albums by Green Day as a whole, but there are three gaps in its appearance in my music library. First, I passed on everything prior to the album Dookie, because that stuff was punk - a genre synonymous with inappropriate lyrics and music more noisy than tuneful. Second, I do not have the Warning album that was released between Nimrod and American Idiot, although I own the two songs that were popular off of it, Warning and Minority (although both seemed to have too many polysyllabic words to be worth writing parodies of, in my opinion) and it is possible that I will check it out further someday. Finally, between 21st Century Breakdown and Revolution Radio, they did three albums in which they returned to their punk roots, but in doing so reached such levels of inappropriateness that they put off even some of their existing fans (myself included).
The Journey I know is fairly typical rock. Not as basic as REO Speedwagon, but rarely particularly difficult either.
I focused my attention on the era when Steve Perry was in the band. They did things before they had him, and after, but without his distinctive vocals, I am unsure if it would sound like Journey to me.
The typical Loverboy song is a simple, repetitive thing about a guy thinking he is in love with someone. However, they have covered other topics as well, though this variation may not help as they are sometimes just confusing (as you can see from the Behind the scenes
section of my page for their first album.
From what I know of them, REO Speedwagon appears to be a very ordinary rock band. Exceptions exist, but their songs are generally easy to understand, and to memorize, and to come up with rhyming for, and therefore to parody. They are my standard reference for what is basic and straightforward.
Rick Springfield songs are not usually very wordy, but the words he does use can be unusual choices to include in a song (for example, although this was not in a song I did, he sang the words the point is probably moot
once). While this appeals to me from a casual listening perspective, it can make parodying harder. Then there is the matter of subjects. Love, be the relationship good or bad, is his most common subject (with Working Class Dog in particular being all about love), but he covers other topics as well.
This band gets to be all over the place. They created some of the easiest and hardest material I have ever used, and plenty that fell in between. The best broad generalization I can make is that they did many songs on typical topics such as love, and many one-off songs about things they had never covered before and would never cover again. Therefore, there are plenty of opportunities for niche appeal, but also plenty of things that may be just plain difficult.
The band started out as progressive rock, a genre synonymous with indulgent instrumental sections, which means they did six of the ten longest songs I have done, but also means fewer lyrics than you would expect based on song length. (And even once the prog rock era was over, a long song still did not necessarily mean a lot of lyrics, as you can see from Half-Penny, Two-Penny.)
I already provide about all the advice on working with Styx that I can give. All the Styx albums I own have pages on my site. The Styx songs that are in my music library but not on my site are the ones I dislike, deemed unsuitable for parodies, or are just instrumentals.
I pretty much have all the Styx I want, stopping where I did for two main reasons. First is not being a big fan of 1970s music, and therefore missing multiple Styx albums from this decade, especially in its earlier years. Second, Dennis DeYoung, my favorite member of the band, was sadly given the sack in 1999, and neither I nor my friends own anything they have done without him. (They did do one last album with him in 1999, but it was one of their least popular albums ever, which might be some kind of warning sign.) So, unlike with Green Day, I have not completely written off any studio albums by Styx, but all are unlikely for me to buy if I have not done so already.
Ultravox was not just any band. They did not sing love songs, appearing to prefer topics with deeper meaning. Their subjects are many and wide-ranging, presenting difficulty in coming up with a broad generalization, and possibly in parodying as well. However, their songs are usually short on lyrics, so getting them memorized is one thing that can be done with ease.