The first two questions on the questionnaire were to
distinguish the gender and age of the people who were being surveyed. I managed
to get 15 males and 15 females to answer the questionnaire of which there were
varying age gaps.
The following question was “Have you ever listened to a music parody?” This
question would help me to realize how popular parodies were amongst the people
I surveyed. 25 of the 30 people I
surveyed had listened to at least one parody before with 5 admitting they had
never listened to one.
As the rest of my questionnaire revolves around the knowledge, opinions, and
preferences of people who HAVE listened to parodies, the 5 who answered “No”
did not need to finish the rest of the survey.
The following question was to discover what draws them to listen to parodies
the most. Over half of the results came back as the thing they find most
enjoyable is the amusing lyrics, with a split between the remainder who prefer
the funny video that accompanies the song and the fact the parody artist is
taking the mess out of one of their favourite artists. Overall, people are more
drawn to liking a parody song due to the amusing lyrics. This gave the urge to
create a song with strong relatable/funny lyrics.
The next question that was asked was “Do you prefer a music parody when there
is a video to accompany the song?” The vast majority said “Yes, it makes it
more appealing” with only a few saying “No, it doesn’t really bother me”. This
implies that for people to enjoy a parody song even more, they crave an amusing
video too to go with it.
“How do you access parody music songs” was the question afterwards.
The vast majority expressed that they gain access to parodies through the use
of the internet from sites such as YouTube. Radio was another popular answer
and through my own knowledge, I know certain radio shows such as The Radio 1
Breakfast Show, previously hosted by DJ Chris Moyles, used to feature parodies very
frequently. Only a few people responded saying they accessed them via TV. The
lack of responses for that answer suggests that not many parodies even make it
to TV broadcast, often they remain solely on the internet. The demand for parodies
on TV is not that high compared to other genres and styles so only a select few
parody artists who have become ‘big names’ such as Weird Al Yankovic appear on
TV shows alongside your everyday pop artists. Smaller, lesser known parody
artists don’t get as much TV recognition and therefore their work is primarily
accessed via the internet. A few people answered in the questionnaire that
although they don’t personally go and retrieve a parody song a listen to head,
they are secondary listeners as their friends and family often play a song for
them to listen to if they feel they will like it.
The subsequent question asked, “How do you go about finding
new parodies?” The results showed that people listen to a parody song then go tell
other people about it on a regular basis. This is shown by the fact many people
answered “Notified by other people”. This suggests that for a parody artist to
achieve success, one of the main points for them in achieving such success is
the distribution of individuals spreading the word about them and their songs.
Word of mouth is a vital tool in the success of a parody artist. It only takes
one person to discover a song and in a matter of minutes that one person could
have shared the link to the song on social networking sites such as Facebook
and Twitter which can amount to hundreds, sometimes thousands of people which
the link is now in front of.
Another answer from this question which achieved a great amount of responses
was “searching for a parody artist you’ve heard before”, this suggests that
once an individual recognises a parody artist for the first time, they will
continue to check up to see if that artist has released any more material.
Therefore it is vitally important for an artist to release early on, material
that is of superior quality and something that is easily remembered by
potential audience members in order to continue achieving success through
popularity.
The other two answers for this question were pretty split. “Searching for an
existing song you like and adding the word ‘parody’” proved to be a popular
result also. Therefore, parody artists should take into consideration the
profile of the song in which they are parodying. For example, an original song
from someone who is massively popular and mainstream will achieve much more
success that an original song from someone who is not that well known. This is
due the fact audience members will search for songs of their favourite artists
and add the word ‘parody’. There are often millions of fans of the mainstream
artists, of which a proportion may come into contact with the parody artists’
material however if the song which is parodied is not from a mainstream artist,
it will not gain much notification and gratification from as many fans of the
original.
And many people just come across parodies unintentionally, according to my
findings.
Weird Al Yankovic proved to be the most common parody artist
people were familiar with when asked in my questionnaire. He is a very high
profile parody artist, one of whom who has achieved great success from
parodying a broad range of songs from the most popular mainstream artists.
Another popular result was Chris Moyles, with many of the people I surveyed
admitting they heard his songs whilst he was a DJ on BBC Radio 1. Chris Moyles and
his Radio 1 team created many parody songs which were played on the show as
well as releasing two parody albums.
‘The Key of Awesome’ was another answer which featured heavily. The Key of
Awesome is a web series by ‘Barely Political’, of which they have released a
number of pop culture songs which have proved popular with people around the
world.
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| Chris Moyles, Weird Al Yankovic & The Key of Awesome |
For one of my ancillary tasks, I am looking at creating a
website homepage for my parody band ‘Nizzle Flips’, so as part of my
questionnaire I asked the question “What would you expect to feature on a
parody artists’ website?” in order for me to see what people will look for most
on a website. The most frequent response was for videos of the bands’ parody
music videos and the lyrics so that they can learn them and then sing along to
the songs. People would also like to view a gallery of images from the band including
a number of behind the scenes images as well as videos. They would also like to
receive information on the band members through the use of bio’s and blogs in
order to be able to learn more about the band. In addition to the parody
videos, a number of people suggested that the original videos should be placed
directly next to the parody ones so that people can compare the two. Something that wasn't mentioned by any of the people I surveyed was 'merchandise, however, this is something I will plan on putting into my website.
This is an example of a digipak from Oasis. I am going to create a 6 panel digipak just like this one.
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