Since there is already a thread for songs that are impossible to parody, I decided to put up a thread about the easiest songs to parody.  :)

I'll start by putting up what the easiest songs for me to parody are, and if anyone wants to discuss those songs or what they find easiest to parody, be my guest.  :)

1: "Mellow Yellow" by Donovan. This is a familiar oldies song that is pretty darn easy to parody into almost any theme, and is an old standby in my list of parodies.

2: "Fallin' in Love" by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. While a great deal less familiar than "Mellow Yellow", this song is nearly as versatile and very easy to parody. Also an old standby for me. (shameless plug alert:) Due in part to the obscurity of both the OS and the band that performed it, I am the only one to date who's posted any parodies of this song. A remake and partial rewrite in the 1990s by R&B group La Bouche was nearly as good as the original, and I'm working on ways to spoof that one.  8)

3: "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits. Another easy one to parody, although its versatility is more limited than the two above. It is very familiar, due in part to its reputation for being annoying and a bit nonsensical.

4: "Can You Feel The Love Tonight?", both the Lion King Movie and Elton John versions. Nearly as versatile as #1 and #2, and both are quite familiar, Elton John's version perhaps more so due to widespread radio play on soft-rock stations.

That's all for now!  8)

"Cocaine" by Eric Clapton. Only about 3 paragraphs, and a repeat of the last line. Way too easy.

"Praise You" by Fatboy Slim comes to mind; there isn't a very big selection of words in that song. Of course, you could make each instance of "I have to praise you" into different things, to have some more variety.

Also "Oye Como Va" by Santana; there's only one little stanza in that song, which gets repeated a few times altogether (with a couple of long instrumental breaks in between).

Right now, all I could come up with is "The Night Before" by The Beatles and "Did You Ever See A Lassie", a Traditional Children's song.  :)

Easy song doesn't always make it easy to parody though.  I've used When You Wish Upon A Star at least 4 times.

"Open Arms" by Journey is pretty easy. Just 2 verses and 2 choruses.

Although I haven't gotten the chance to yet(At least until Karma records gets my copy in), Kenny and Cleo by the Black Market Flowers looks easy to parody.

Like with DJ's last example, Kenny and Cleo has two verses and choruses.

Terrific examples, everyone!  :) I'll have to look this thread, the Big 7 thread, and the impossible-to-parody thread over when I run out of ideas for OSes, or when I want to write a parody that is something different from the 60s and 70s oldies songs and 70s/80s rock songs that make up the lion's share of my parodies.

Those songs from the Free Credit Report.com commercials lol

I feel that Sliver by Nirvana is pretty easy to parody as well, a decent of categories can fit into and it's pretty short.(around 2 minutes + )

I agree about the Free Credit Report.com commercial songs, but I don't think lyrics for them are too easy to find online.

"Sliver" by Nirvana seems pretty easy, Step-Chan, and I'll have to dig up some of my old Nirvana cassette tapes and CDs (I have a whole walk-in closet full of cassettes, CDs, records, minidiscs, 8-track tapes, reel-to-reel tapes and vinyl records, so it'd be quite a task) and listen to it before I decide to parody it. I may also hit up Last.fm, YouTube or Rhapsody if I don't want to excavate my music vault for just one song  Again, great ideas here.  :)

I just need to get my Black Market Flowers CD so I can have more opportunities to dechiper the lyrics.(They're hard to understand from the video I have favorited on Youtube. Heck, I can't even watch the vid due to computer problems at the moment. Can't wait for a reload)

If I'm lucky, maybe the album will have the lyrics in it. But it's unlikely since they haven't been posted by anyone else online(Me, Wildcard and some others on here have partially transcribed it, but it's not 100% accurate). But that could also be due to the fact that some weren't just interested in it.

After that's done, I can do my parodies for it(still need to finish my current one).

How about "The 12 Days Of Christmas"? Just find 12 things or so appropos to one topic, try to find the proper pacing, and you are good to go...

Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Gifts of Christmas and Sesame Street's all-Muppet parody are two of my favorites.



Cookie Monster -- "One delicious cookie"
Hard Head Henry Harris -- "Two baby frogs"
Prairie Dawn -- "Three footballs"
Grover -- "Four wooly bears"
Bert -- "Five argyle socks"
Ernie -- "Six rubber duckies"
Oscar -- "Seven rusty trashcans"
Count von Count -- "Eight counts a' counting"
Big Bird -- "Nine pounds of birdseed"
Smart Tina -- "Ten wind-up rabbits"
Herry -- "Eleven broken buildings"
Mr. Snuffleupagus -- "Twelve.... I can't remember!"


Twelve-pack of Bud
Eleven Wrastling tickets
Ten o' Copenhagen
Nine years probation
Eight table dancers
Seven packs of Redman
Six cans of Spam
Five flannel shirts
Four big mud tires
Three shotgun shells
Two hunting dogs
... And some parts to a Mustang GT.

Easily I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry should be near the top of the list, Red Ant and I have come up with probably over a hundred quasi ideas to that song

I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry
I'm Beautiful by James Blunt
Papa Don't Preach by Madonna
Hard Days Night by The Beatles
I Put a Spell On You by Screaming Jay Hawkins
I Heard it Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye
Stop in the Name of Love by The Supremes
Pain by Jimmy Eat World
Smelly Cat by Lisa Kudrow
A Whole New World from Aladdin

There's lots of others, but those ones are particularly easy

Papa Don't Preach is one of those that is easy to do. Difficult to master.

Papa Don't Preach is one of those that is easy to do. Difficult to master.


I think that applies to almost all short and simple songs.

What about... This song's easy to parody, Easy to parody, This song's easy to parody (Ba Da Da Da!)

I mean "Know Your Enemy" by Green Day

Agreed!
http://hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net/hs037.snc1/4337_107111709166_753894166_2634381_7325629_n.jpg
http://www.amiright.com/parody/2000s/greenday428.shtml

I think the shortest of songs (lyric-wise), while they are easy in one sense because they are quick to parody, can generally be harder to do well, since you have a very limited number of words/lines to work with.

Longer songs, with lots of words in each line or verse ("One Week", "It's the End of the World as we Know it", etc), can be tougher to master because of pacing and the sheer length of the song. However, once complete and if done well, these naturally tend to be a lot funnier simply because you have the freedom to use more creative/longer lines, or multi-syllabic words.

So both types can be tough in different ways. Generally speaking, I'd say the songs that truly are easiest to parody, would be any song that has a simple rhyme scheme with simple lyrics in a simple metre, and lines that are of "average" length... I won't cite examples but I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds of songs that fall under this category :)

I think the shortest of songs (lyric-wise), while they are easy in one sense because they are quick to parody, can generally be harder to do well, since you have a very limited number of words/lines to work with.

Longer songs, with lots of words in each line or verse ("One Week", "It's the End of the World as we Know it", etc), can be tougher to master because of pacing and the sheer length of the song. However, once complete and if done well, these naturally tend to be a lot funnier simply because you have the freedom to use more creative/longer lines, or multi-syllabic words.

So both types can be tough in different ways. Generally speaking, I'd say the songs that truly are easiest to parody, would be any song that has a simple rhyme scheme with simple lyrics in a simple metre, and lines that are of "average" length... I won't cite examples but I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds of songs that fall under this category :)

Agreed on all counts... I guess it basically depends on the overall structure of the song itself.

Also... "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)" by Pink Floyd seems rather easy to parody. Only a few sung lines (which are sung through once, then repeated entirely).

I find short songs more difficult, by and large: sure, it's easy to whip off another parody to "Yesterday" based around pretty much any trisyllabic word, but that doesn't mean it's a parody worth doing.  I guess it depends on whether you're after quality or quantity...

The three I probably find easiest to make a decent parody of are probably not the obvious: Be Our Guest, The Major-General's Song and Supercalifragilistetc - all songs that once you have an idea to hang from them, really lend themselves to making it a good one.

Karma for you


I find short songs more difficult, by and large: sure, it's easy to whip off another parody to "Yesterday" based around pretty much any trisyllabic word, but that doesn't mean it's a parody worth doing.  I guess it depends on whether you're after quality or quantity...

The three I probably find easiest to make a decent parody of are probably not the obvious: Be Our Guest, The Major-General's Song and Supercalifragilistetc - all songs that once you have an idea to hang from them, really lend themselves to making it a good one.

Yeah, that's true. Although it doesn't hurt to parody shorter songs like that, you can throw them together as something extra while working on other longer parodies. I guess shorter songs can be thought as gateways for more of a novetly type theme is some cases.

Anything ever sung in the 60s!

I disagree

Anything ever sung in the 60s!


Creeque Alley, eve of destruction, i think desolation row was from the 60s

There's also a big difference between coming up with an angle to take and being able to follow through on that angle

I disagree
Creeque Alley, eve of destruction, i think desolation row was from the 60s

There's also a big difference between coming up with an angle to take and being able to follow through on that angle


Compared to modern songs those are as epic as Britney Spears... Which is not epic.

things like Eve Of Distruction would be in my okay, but what do I do with it category. medium.

Yeah, that's true. Although it doesn't hurt to parody shorter songs like that, you can throw them together as something extra while working on other longer parodies. I guess shorter songs can be thought as gateways for more of a novetly type theme is some cases.


Definitely a good reason to write a short parody, to exercise your mind and creativity while working on a longer parody. I wrote "Drink Like A Sailor", "Guts" and "He Has Lost A Leg Tonight" while working on a parody of "Purple Rain" by Prince, which took quite a long time to do thanks to the use of fledgling leetspeak throughout almost all lyrics available online, including those that I generally use, as well as intermittent burnouts on the Prince parody and myriad health issues.

"Drink Like A Sailor" was an example of the novelty theme, and as most who participate in both AIR and the AIR forums know, I wrote the last two for contests. Short OSes are great for spur-of-the-moment parody ideas as well as novelties, and I often use short OSes such as the ones I mentioned in my first post in this thread for ideas that suddenly come to mind while doing something entirely unrelated to parodies, humor or music. My parody ideas often come while taking a shower, while pulling weeds, or being stuck in a traffic jam listening to Glen Beck. (Yes, that's right. Andria DOES listen to and watch conservative pundits, she thinks they're funny but doesn't agree with them.  ;D)