New song about Spider-Man

On 'Weird Al' Yankovic's new album, Poodle Hat, there's a song about the Spider-Man movie. It's a parody of 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel. The lyrics are

Go Weird Al, you the ma-a-a-n! Great song. Not exactly a parody, though.

Then what the heck is your definition of 'a parody'???

None of Wierd Al's songs are. I don't see the point - I mean, they're not funny in their own right, and they don't score any points by actually parodying the original either. I can only assume they're designed for people who have heard of the concept of a parody, but have no understanding of how one works.

(Present company excluded, clearly, as your message above proves).

This is funny.

This is funny.

OK, fair question, how funny does something have to be before it becomes a 'parody'? Personally, I prefer my parodies to be more tongue in cheek. The original Airplane movie was based on a serious script that was made funny by making only mild changes in each scene. The Police Squad TV show and Naked Gun movies worked because dialogue was always delivered was a straight face. Does anybody really think that parodies aren't parodies until they get to be so silly that they no longer bare any resemblance to the source material? What would be the point of that sort of 'parody'? Sounds more like a farce to me. A person who insists that parodies need to get silly before they can be considered parodies strikes me as someone who just doesn't enjoy the art of parody. Quite possibly that would have to be someone with no sense of humour.

The one that comes closest to being an actual parody of the original song is his 'Smells Like Nirvana' (from 'Off the Deep End'. In brief, Al's version is about how difficult it is to understand the garbled lyrics of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'

Then there are Al's style parodies, where he uses the basics of a certain genre, making it sound like an 'actual' song at first, then adds weird lyrics. (See his 'Christmas at Ground Zero' from 1986, a '50s-era-sounding Christmas song all about celebrating the holidays after a nuclear war. Or his 'Truck Drivin' Song' from '99, a country tune about a cross-dressing trucker.)

'Nuff said, TPE (Who did, in fact, manage to stay on-topic for this newsgroup, as Roger Stern quoted Al's 'Truck Drivin' Song' in an issue of his 'Avengers Two: Wonder Man & Beast' miniseries!)

A Parody should, I think, be using the changing the lyrics of the old song to make fun of the old song, like Smells Like Nirvana. However most of Weird Al's stuff are just funny rewrites. Don't get me wrong, I like him and thanks for the info about the new album, I ordered it yesterday. But I just don't think parody is the right word, dunno what is though?

Well, 'Eat it', 'I Love Rocky Road', 'Like a Surgeon', 'I Lost on Jeopardy', they all mimicked the lyrics of the orignal song and not just the music. I think if it wasn't generally accepted that he was doing parodies then he'd have faced countless lawsuits by now.

There's that, and the fact that he doesn't do a parody without the permission of the subject and the creator of the original. He was once asked (in an e-mail interview) if anyone has refused him permission, and he said that only one person refused him on multiple occassions, but he couldn't tell us who it was because his keyboard didn't seem to have that