The original song is something to work with, not to overturn.
Since every parodist will want to do something different, it is perhaps easier to speak of what not to do. This can be a very handy reference - when you get a parody idea, make a quick check to ensure it does not fall into any of the following categories.
Having figured out what I wanted my parodying to be through trial and error, I found the problem ones fell into some general categories. The various broad kinds of problems are given sections below, though none of them are mutually exclusive. Also, there is one thing all of them are associated with, and that is trying to force a subject into a song that does not suit it.
For various examples of these problems, see my own trial and error record and this category of bad examples.
A non improvement is a parody that is not as pleasing as the original song. This is, of course, mostly just a matter of opinion, but it is still important. Your parody has little point if you do not like it at least as much as the original song.
Given how different individual opinions are, it is inevitable that not everyone will like your parody as much as the original lyrics. However, you can take steps to reduce how many people that is likely to be. Things that are generally likely to reduce your popularity include:
Flirting with any of the above is fine if it makes good use of the song or is just part of the story you are telling, but you should never go out of your way to be unpleasant.
I now consider many of my early parodies to be non improvements. I attribute the problem to twisting songs around too much.
Because I have always been disinterested in romance, perverting love songs is intrinsically funny to me. Therefore, I developed a penchant for writing parodies that were opposites of the original songs. But I took it too far, turning gratitudes into hatred, sympathy to hostility, protest songs to songs about activities that could never change anything, profoundly meaningful lyrics to gibberish, and holidays to killing days. Now that I have grown out of writing them, those parodies are abominations even to me. Nowadays I generally limit use of the turnabout style to love songs and the rare song like Troubled Times that is clearly brighter if turned around 180 degrees.
Many things in life have two equally (or almost equally) bad extremes, even if one end of the spectrum is not as obvious a problem as the other. I liken these to teeter-totters of which both ends should be kept from touching the ground. When applying the metaphor to the tone of a parody in this context, one end is being depressing and the other is being callous. What you want is something in between, though this can be complicated.
For example, turning a sad song into its opposite may sound like a good way to make it funny, but in practice, you can easily go too far the other way and end up being callous. You do not want your parodies
to be about someone having a troubled life, but it is just as unfunny to take pathos for someone’s dad and upend it all by changing father
to bother.
(I am happy to say I am not guilty of either of these particular examples, but at some point, both were things at least one of my readers erroneously but definitely would have guessed. It is one of the reasons I encourage even non-parodists to read this page.)
A killing spree is a parody written under influence from a violent video game. It is not a problem unto itself, but more a magnet for several issues. First is the unpleasant nature of the topic. Second, writing about the things you killed in a particular video game tends to be too inside-jokey, especially if it is something the player is not supposed to do (like my whacking sea mutants with torches, which requires a long explanation even for other Lego Pirates of the Caribbean players). Third, going off of a video game can easily result in a nonsense parody because things can only happen in such a game if the programmers specifically decide they can, meaning violations of logic and the laws of physics are inevitable. Finally, few if any songs actually lend themselves well to this topic, so mismatches, broken meters, and wastes also occur.
A tiny niche is something that is meant to have an audience other than just the creator, yet is only accessible to a small number of people (at worst, meaning only those who live with the creator would get it). In-jokes are not necessarily a bad thing, but there is no reason not to have as large a potential audience as you can. It is also worth thinking about the fact that writing something down means anyone, at any future date, could read it. The more topical you make it, the harder it will be to explain to more people, and the greater the risk that the original intended audience or even you yourself will forget what it means.
I had many good reasons not to publish my early parodies, but their inside-jokiness is at the top of the list. Almost all of them spoke of things including (but not limited to) Squidbeard,
Homo oceani,
the cartoonist,
and the Optic Protection Act
that you had to know me personally to understand. Old War
and Lego Pieces of Eight
are the only parodies that do not fit my main canon to appear on my site, and it is mainly because they are among the only exceptions to this sheer inside-jokiness.
Fan fiction, specifically, should be avoided when writing song parodies for several reasons. First and foremost, in order to find your parody funny, the audience has to know what it is about, which will not be generally possible if it is something you made up. If they recognize the characters but not the events, they will not laugh, only be confused. Second, having to fit within the words of a song someone else wrote can be awkward - better to write fan fiction in a format where the only limit is your imagination. Finally, if you have to make something up to make certain characters suit the song, you should not be making it about them to begin with.
A mismatch is a parody where the words do not sound enough like that of the original song. Of course, it is unavoidable to occasionally replace a word with one that does not rhyme at all, as telling a sensible story is more important. This is fine as long as you keep these infrequent enough to not be too noticeable (you can find out if the not rhyming sticks out or not by listening to the original song and singing your parody over it).
But it is important to remember that every word needs your attention, not just the ones that make up the rhyme scheme. Things that qualify as mismatches include only rhyming with the words at the ends of the lines (e.g. Thinking there was snow beneath your feet
for Then it turned out to only be a dream), using similar things instead of similar sounds (e.g.
Captain Jack
for St. Jimmy
), and rendering the title of the song completely unrecognizable (e.g. That Captain
for Whatsername
).
See here for more advice on how to avoid mismatches.
A broken meter is perhaps the most straightforward of the problem parody types, simply meaning having too many or not enough syllables. It is another good reason to sing the parody over the original song - make sure what you wrote fits the allotted space.
Often, a broken meter happens because the original song and parody subject do not go together well. As such, the solutions to many problems with parodies - namely, make the song about something else, or tell your story to the tune of a different song - are especially applicable here.
A waste is a parody that does not work with the original song as much as it could have. This is often relative to the parodist, but can be absolute. I will start with the latter.
Parodies are not change for the sake of it. Therefore, never replace words with other words or phrases that mean the same thing. This is perhaps the easiest rule I can offer you. If you changeanyoneto
anybody,you have broken the meter for no reason. Anyone who does something like that either does not understand the purpose of a parody or is not taking it seriously.
As for relative wastes, I shall use my example, with the chosen setting for my parodying being Pirates of the Caribbean. As the lore of this franchise includes a story about a bad relationship, I can keep songs that are already about bad relationships on that topic. I would not make my best use of them if I made them about something completely different.
Although the two are not mutually exclusive, a nonsense parody is in some ways the opposite of a waste. If a waste is what happens when you make the song surrender, a nonsense parody is what happens when the song makes you surrender.
To explain the metaphor, a nonsense parody is something trying too hard to fit the original song, that would make clear it was not an original song even to those who do not know the original song. Examples include:
Mr. Tentacles)
I advise original songwriters and parodists alike that every individual line in a song should be a sentence that could be used anywhere without calling attention to itself. If this is not what you would say, or how you would say it, if you were not worried about a tune, do not say it that way in a song.
A multiple subject disorder is what happens if multiple subjects that do not go together appear in the same parody.
A good example of this was when the Comic Five took on Basket Case. The resulting parody was all about criticizing Disney and their melodramatic creations - except the second half of the third verse, in which they went to the shore and Mr. Gibbs complained about it being boring and unfunny; which had nothing to do with the rest of the parody.
You will notice that some of the individual parodies on the site fall into more than one subject category, but most do not. They stay generally on topic for a reason.