Songs That Are Pastiches But Are Actually Really Good

My iPod threw up Will Ferell's 'Love You Sexy' the other day which is quite obviously a pisstake but is in fact really good...are there any others you can think
Of..

was surprised to find that matt berry (of IT crowd/garth marenghi etc etc) had made some psych/folk records that stood up pretty well. perhaps they are serious, but it is hard to believe that when his face is on the sleeve

bowie's in space
Most beautiful girl in the room
All the ladies in the world
Business time

Etc from fotc

Ween's Gabrielle sounds like the best Thin Lizzy song ever

And Weird Al's TMBG take 'Everything You Know Is Wrong' is borderline faultless

Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" is the best Devo song Devo never wrote.

is this thread supposed to be a joke?

a pastiche

but actually really good

This is a mildly silly idea for a thread (not that I'm one to talk). But any excuse to share with the world the L.S. Bumblebee is fine with me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekp0mVVEe-4

Bunch of Lonely Island.

White & Nerdy > Ridin

a lot of ween tracks: Japanese Cowboy, It's Gonna Be a Long Night, Freedom of '76, etc.

Beck - Hollywood Freaks

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MDK4-ZCd6y8/SbRC65_5RcI/AAAAAAAAAMo/jxswVqyeCJY/s400/Ruben+and+the+Jets+front.jpg

Bloodhound Gang "The Bad Touch"

The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands

http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/U/utopia_defacef.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9P_3KrJeGw

My favorite Joy Division song is The Overload, does that count?

David Bowie - Young Americans

http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-themes/images/album-The-Rutles-Archaeology.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpKu5L-XyZM

Maria McKee's "Non-Religious Building" is probably the most skillful Who pastiche I've ever heard.

"Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"

L.S. Bumblebee
thanks, really diggin this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njiUFtrFky8

Weird, I was going to ask if the OP meant "parodies" rather than "pastiches" but according to wikipedia there are other people who think the two are synonymous. When did that happen?

I think we're talking about imitations, not parodies, right?

"Cups and Cakes" by Spinal Tap

Most of my favourite songs fall under the category of this thread.

Pastiches are songs that appropriate a musical style.

Parodies are songs that appropriate a specific song. It doesn't have to be the same musical style, but it does need to have the same basic tune, and/or satirise the original lyric.

Weird, I was going to ask if the OP meant "parodies" rather than "pastiches" but according to wikipedia there are other people who think the two are synonymous. When did that happen?

― unmetalled world (wk), Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:53 (7 hours ago) Bookmark

TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM

Thread's all about Ween really. Best tracks on "Cruising With Ruben & the Jets" are the those that aren't pastiches.

I MEAN POSTMODERNISM, FUCK

I never quite sure which Bonzo Dog Band tracks are pastiches, and if so, which bands they are pastiching. (Is eg "Keynsham" a pastiche, and if so, of whom?), but they are all fantastic and stand on their own.

Fuck the Arab Spring...The revolution starts here...

I think they did far fewer pastiches than people imagine... "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites" is an obvious one (xp)

which is parody, you're all wrong

WEIRD AL EXAMPLE

'dare to be stupid' is pastiche: it borrows devo's style but doesn't explicitly mock devo's music or approach
'smells like nirvana' is parody: not because it borrows the melody of 'smells like teen spirit', but because it explicitly mocks the way that nirvana operated

BLUES EXAMPLE

'can blue men sing the whites' is parodic
hugh laurie's blues album is pastiche, but not parodic

A bunch of them seem very proggy, but they were able to make that kind of music.

For instance, "We are normal and we want our freedom" is a parody of the Love track, but sounds unlike them.

Isn't Hugh's album too srs to be pastiche?

OK, I can see that the Bonzos track is a parody, but I think you'll have to come up with a better example of a blues pastiche than Hugh Laurie...

Utopia's "Deface The Music" is crowded with excellent Beatles pastiches that work perfectly as songs in their own right.

Same about The Spongetones "Beat Music".

'pastiche' doesn't imply a critical or humorous attitude on the part of the creator

you could argue that the laurie record is JUST A BLUES RECORD DAMMIT and that it just comfortably falls within its genre, i guess, but i mean eh it's hugh laurie

Middle class white Englishman making a blues record, hmmmmmmmmm

... didn't the Bonzos do a song about that?

(better example of blues pastiche would be 60s r&b groups including an 12-bar number they'd written themselves on a record, i guess; the line between 'that is a pastiche of a blues song' and 'that is just a blues song' is probably subjective)

Funny 'cos Stanshall was pals with Clapton

Queen did some great vaudeville pastiches. "Lazin' On a Sunday Afternoon" is fantastic.

Hugh's is all cover versions, isn't it?

(I haven't heard any of it, so hey)

The Bonzos doing "hunting tigers", is it a pastiche? It's done in the same spirit as the original...

"I'm not shaking, you silly goose, I'm just doing the Watusi, that's all..."

Well, that's an addition for sure, but it belongs..

"but there are no tigers in India!"
"That's because I've shot them all" was subtracted..

Weird Al Yankovic's style parodies are usually a bit too tongue-in-cheek to work as anything but great comedy, but this is actually a very good Ben Folds-influenced song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szAJ3J44Zug

Dunno if it quite counts as a pastiche as it has Ben Folds himself on piano though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hAb5RJfYds

I know, that was supposed to be JRot's fav track, but I guess you had to be there...

I can't see that, but if it's "Fodderstompf", I didn't have to be there

Wasn't Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In meant to be a pastiche of psych-rock but ended up being awesome psych-rock? Cos if so, that one.

the temptations' "psychedelic shack" works more or less the same way

Queen did some great vaudeville pastiches. "Lazin' On a Sunday Afternoon" is fantastic.

― Hongroe (Geir Hongro), Thursday, May 19, 2011 6:34 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

about half of Queen's biggest hits belong in this thread really

Springsteen started writing "I'm On Fire" as a Johnny Cash pastiche.

... and "Hungry Heart" for The Ramones...

It could be argued that A Momentary Lapse Of Reason is a Pink Floyd pastiche.

Deep Purple-Anyone's Daughter

'pastiche' doesn't imply a critical or humorous attitude on the part of the creator

Yeah, to me the distinction is that pastiche isn't necessarily humorous while parody is always an attempt to be humorous, and a pastiche always combines multiple borrowed elements while a parody usually focuses on a single target. So to my mind the idea of "songs that are pastiches but are actually really good" doesn't make sense because it encompasses such a huge range of stuff that's already widely acknowledged to be "actually really good" like the entirety of hip hop, artists like Beck, or Quentin Tarantino. But most of the things listed in this thread like Weird Al, Rutles, and Flight of the Conchords are parodies.

Haven't checked out textbook definitions, but in my perception, both usually have humor built in. But pastiche is affectionate and parody is sarcastic/mocking. (There are exceptions of course. #notgeir)

But most of the things listed in this thread like Weird Al, Rutles, and Flight of the Conchords are parodies.

― unmetalled world (wk), Thursday, May 19, 2011 8:30 AM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark

the distinction does get blurry though. weird al's most famous songs ("eat it", "white and nerdy") are simple parodies of existing songs, cover versions with funny lyrics. but also writes pastiches of specific artists and genres - with, yeah, a parodic element. most rutles stuff is both pastiche and parody.

"...he also writes..."

Just to post about the same song in two threads at once, "On The Dark Side" is a pastiche (lyrics, horns, the whole thing) without showing any humor about it, other than a good time.

scissor sisters to thread

and born this way (album) for that matter

....Flight of the Conchords are parodies.

bowie conchords tune ticks all pastiche definitions i've seen itt

It's also a parody of Bowie:

A parody in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation.

bowie conchords tune ticks all pastiche definitions i've seen itt

I'm not saying that a parody can't also be a pastiche. But a song like Re-Make/Re-Model by Roxy Music is a pastiche too. Yet it doesn't fit the thread's apparent theme of "comedy songs that you are surprised are actually good".

A mean a huge chunk of 20th century pop music and pop art in general consists of pastiches that are actually really good, right?

Yeah, the point of a lot of postmodern theory was that everything was pastiche anyway so we might as well own up to it.

"Inner City Pressure"