You Will Submit!

Lots of People Write Christian Parodies of Secular Tunes.

If you're one of these people, send 'em in so we can all enjoy them!

If you enjoy praising God by writing Parodeities, share that praise with others! Send your Parodies to rhyde@cs.ucr.edu and (assuming they're appropriate) I'll post them here on the "Not Invented Here" page for all to enjoy. Praise God!

Although I (Randy Hyde) place all of my parodies into the public domain so that you may use them any way you see fit, you should not assume that the parodies linked from all the pages on Webster are public domain. It's safest to assume that parodies written by someone else are copyrighted and that copyright is held by the original author. As a general rule, you can probably assume that it's okay to use these parodies in a Worship Service or other limited performance arena, but recording these parodies is probably a no-no. Contact the original author for more details (email rhyde@cs.ucr.edu for contact information). Note that some parody submissions appearing on Webster were not submitted by the original author. If you feel that a parody's presence on this website is a copyright infringement, please contact me at rhyde@cs.ucr.edu and I will promptly remove the infringing item.
Randy Hyde

Let me begin by stating the kind of parodies I won't post here on Webster: I won't post parodies that deny the deity of Christ, claim the Bible is incorrect, claim that Christian faith is unwarranted, refute the basic tenets of the Christian faith, seem anti-Christian to me, or whose theology I have problems with. For example, I would flat out reject any parody that (seriously) suggests one could get to heaven through any other means that by God's grace and faith in Jesus Christ. If in doubt, email me and we can discuss the matter.

While I personally prefer songs of praise, I have no problems whatsoever at all with true parodies or humorous submissions, as long as they are not in incredibly bad taste. After all, Jesus Christ lampooned the hypocrites of His time, I don't have a problem with people lampooning the hypocrites of our time (check out "Preachers on T.V." on the Parodeities page for a good example of just such a parody). I'm not too concerned about "political correctness" or "religious correctness" (R.C., meaning it's incorrect to poke fun at the church). If you want to write a song making fun of Baptists, Fundamentalists, Catholics, etc., that's all right as long as it's in good humor and you're parodying man's beliefs, traditions, and dogma. Obviously, some people may find some of this material offensive if they don't have a strong sense of humor. I will try to label those parodies that some people may find offensive; if you're easily offended, don't read them.

What to Send:

To submit your parodies, simply email them to rhyde@cs.ucr.edu.

Plain text (ASCII) is always best. HTML, MS-Word, and other format almost always involve my retyping the parody in from scratch. Please, spare me that agony :-) I maintain this website on a Macintosh, so if you submit text in HTML or some strange format, funny things often happen when converting text from the PC to the Mac (like the apostrophes turn into funny characters, and other issues that force me to manually edit the text). If you can read your document using Notepad.exe, then it's probably fine for submission. I prefer that you simply cut and paste your parody into your email message rather than sending it as an attachment (I usually cut and paste submissions from Outlook Express on a PC into a single notepad document before copying the data over to my Mac; this is easier to do if I don't have to constantly open up attachments).

Please, don't submit something in all uppercase text (very difficult to read). It's best to put one line in the song per line of text in the file. If you prefer, you may label the chorus at it's first occurrence and then use something like "[chorus]" to denote repeating the chorus. Or you can simply cut and paste the text for the chorus throughout the song; whatever you feel is best.

Webster publishes lyrics. Guitar tabs are cool, but I'm not set up to publish that kind of material. If you submit lyrics with tablatures (chords) contact me about a format. However, if you submit lyrics with the guitar tabs, I have to edit them out.

I don't want to sound unappreciative and gripe about the editing I have to do, but keep in mind, I'm a single point of contact for a lot of people submitting parodies and I usually burn up several hours each weekend just putting plain text into HTML format. You can help me out a lot by simply submitting your parodies in pure text form. I don't reject parodies that aren't in pure text form, but you can make my life a little easier...

Copyright Issues

Of course, writing parodies takes you into that gray area of the copyright law. I can't tell you, for example, whether my parody of "Every Breath You Take" has gone way over the line with the number of lines borrowed from the original lyrics. In the Supreme Court case where the Court decided that parody was "fair use," the plantiffs had borrowed only one line from the original song! Personally, I'm not going to play lawyer/judge and decide what's fair and what's not here. If a responsible party contacts me concerning copyright infringement (as noted above), I will remove the offending lyrics from this site. However, when writing parodies, it's best if your lyrics are completely original to avoid any problems.

Having just said that, note that all my Parodeities are in the public domain, so you're welcome (indeed, I even encourage you) to rework my lyrics anyway you see fit. Kudos to Jeff James for improving many of my Parodeities (much of his work appears on this page). Don't be afraid to rewrite one of my parodies and borrow as little or as much as you like; I actually like people to do this. That offer, however, only applies to my Parodies; it does not apply to the parodies written by others appearing here on Webster (including those that are reworks of my lyrics). I cannot speak for their authors and I certainly understand that some people don't want others "messing with their masterpieces."

Q&A:

"How Come Some People Get Their Own Page?"

Webster started out with two different pages containing parodies: the Parodeities page containing the parodies that I'd (Randy Hyde) written, and then the "Not Invented Here" page containing parodies that others had submitted to Webster. The only reason for making this distinction was because my parodies are all public domain but the copyrights of submitted parodies remain with the original authors. By breaking the parodies into two pages, I avoided possible confusion about copyright information. As time passed, certain prolific parody authors began flooding Webster with parody submissions. At one point, for example, nearly every other submission on the "Not Invented Here" page was by Jeff James. To reward Jeff for submitting his own parodies, plus to make maintaining the "Not Invented Here" page a little easier, I broke Jeff's submissions off to the "Paro-duds" page (this also had the effect of making the "Not Invented Here" page a little more friendly to first-time contributors; it was somewhat intimidating seeing Jeff's name all over the place). After breaking Jeff's parodies off to a separate page, I set a threshold of 25 parodies for setting up a page containing parodies by a single author. So if you want your own page, get busy! It only takes 25 parodies!

"Do I Have to Submit My Real Name With a Submission?"

Generally, for legal reasons, I prefer to give credit using the actual name of the person who wrote the parody. Other than the name, I do not publish any personal information on Webster. Usually, if someone wants to contact a parody author, I email the author with that person's email address. In some cases I will give the person the email address directly (after evaluating the request for the information). However, if you are uncomfortable posting a parody by your true name on Webster, I'm willing to let you post via a pseudonym. I'd prefer a "stage name" (i.e., a real-sounding name) rather than an email address fragment or some other obvious computer "handle".

"When Will My Parody Appear on Webster?"

I usually post new parodies on the weekends. Sometimes I get involved in a project or I'm out of town for the weekend and it takes a little longer. In the past, I have been known to lose an email, so if it hasn't appeared within two weeks it's a good idea to contact me (though I must say that I've gotten a lot more organized recently and I haven't lost anything, to my knowledge, for quite some time).

"Can The Parodies Appear on Other Web Pages?"

Sure.

I don't require an "exclusive" for Webster. In fact, there are two ways I'll put your parodies up on Webster: (1) I'll physically put the parody on Webster and add it to the "Not Invented Page". I prefer this method since it doesn't require other web servers to be active in order to work properly. (2) I can add a link to your parody from Webster's "Not Even Here" page. I prefer to use this second method for parodies that appear on other sites and I cannot obtain permission to copy the parodies to Webster (processing the links slows down access to the parody and provides a less-pleasant user experience). If you want your parodies to appear on other web pages, feel free to submit them there as well (but do make sure that if you're submitting your parodies to Webster and some other page that the other publisher doesn't require an exclusive).

"Can We Submit Parodies Others Have Written?"

This one is a bit sticky. Obviously if you have the permission of that author to submit their work to Webster, there is no problem at all. Of course, you should notify me that this is the case and be sure to submit the parody under their name (plagiarism is a great way to upset someone who created the parody in the first place).

If you don't know who wrote a parody and you want to submit it, I have been willing to post a parody acknowledging this fact by stating that the parody was "submitted by..." rather than "written by...". I am, of course, always looking for attribution for such submissions, so if you know the original author of such a parody, let me know. Since I am posting such parodies without the permission of their original authors, they're on shaky legal grounds and I will remove such a parody if there are any copyright complaints whatsoever (technically, I shouldn't even post them in the first place, but 99% of the time I'd bet the original author would like to see their work shared in this manner, so I'm willing to go out on a limb just a bit; but do keep in mind that if the original author complains about the presence of their work on Webster, I will remove it, no questions asked).

"Will You Publish My Recording in MP3 Form?"

Actually, no one has asked me about this so I haven't ever had to deal with this issue. However, since I've placed the MP3 recordings of several parodies I've recorded onto Webster, I wouldn't be surprised if this question comes up at one point or another. The general answer is "no." UC Riverside is gracious enough to host this web site (mainly for the Computer Science information present on Webster). I don't want to push my luck by using up too much disk space or bandwidth. What I may be willing to do is put up a recording for a limited amount of time and then remove it. Another possibility, if there is demand for this service, is that I can rotate through a set of recordings on Webster. However, this is all conjecture. To date no one has asked me about this so I'll worry about this problem when someone actually requests it.

"Will You Publish MIDI Files for a Parody?"

Generally, no. If you sequence a song and give me permission to include the MIDI file with your parody, I'll be more than happy to post the MIDI file with your parody. However, tracking down permission for a copyrighted MIDI file on the internet is a nightmare. At one time I considered providing links to sites where people could find MIDI files for the parodies appearing here on Webster. However, I quickly discovered that MIDI file sites tend to come and go on a regular basis (because of the threat of legal action, no doubt), so such a feature on Webster would quickly become useless. Since MIDI file owners (particularly the commercial concerns) are pretty good about shutting down sites that pirate MIDI files, and I don't have the resources to check out the copyright on a file, I felt it was best not to put MIDI files up on Webster.

"How About Publishing MP3 Files of the Music?"

I used to do this. I'd take a MIDI file, play it on my synthesizer, record the result, and save it as an MP3 file on Webster. I've stopped doing this for a couple of reasons. First, the files are just as big as the vocal performance (which most people prefer). Second, someone who really needs the music can search for the MIDI files and generate the music themselves. Finally, there's the legal issue again. Although the MIDI file author doesn't have much of a claim to the original tune, the original artist/songwriter does. Though the Supreme Court decision concerning parodies states that parodies are a 'fair use' of the original song, simply providing the music is not a parody (even if the intent is to play it while reading a parody). Therefore, I'm not comfortable supplying such recordings on Webster (slowly, I've been removing the ones I've had in the past and replacing them with the parody recordings).

"Can We Submit ApologetiX/Bradford/etc. Parodies?"

No. Webster does not publish the lyrics of commercial parody bands without the explicit permission of the parody author. If J. Jackson, Nick Alexander, Mark Bradford, or one of these other Christian parodists wants their material published on Webster, they can let me know. Generally, though, I'm pretty sure they don't want their stuff appearing here on Webster (they generally expect you to purchase their CDs to get the lyrics in the little booklet that comes with the CD). If you're dying to find the lyrics to one of their songs, just email the band. They've been more than happy in the past to email the lyrics to a particular song to one of their fans. If you still feel that these bands would benefit by having their lyrics published here, feel free to talk them into it.

This is true in spades for lyrics from movies like "Sister Act." I'm not particularly interested in getting sued over this ministry and publishing commercial lyrics is a good way to put Webster into some lawyer's crosshairs...

"Will You Write a Parody for Me?"

I've done this in the past. You've got to be willing to release your idea to the public domain before I'll consider doing this however. Note that as a general rule, I don't write parodies "on demand." By that, I mean that I don't take a song and an idea for a parody and crank out the lyrics. Instead, I usually have a large list of songs currently under consideration and I wait for God to inspire me with respect to one of the tunes in my "current" list. It's much easier to write a parody when the idea just sort of "pops into your head" rather than having to work with the restrictions of a "certain idea for a certain song." Nonetheless, I've worked in this fashion in the past and produced some decent parodies that way. However, I'd much prefer that you wrote your own parodies and submitted them to Webster! If you haven't got a clue how to write a parody, be sure the read the information at the link "How To Write a Parody" appearing at the top of this page. To get started, grab one of my parodies off the Parodeities page and tweak that one (and submit your modification back to Webster! Wouldn't be the first time someone has done this). If you're really lost and want help, contact me. I'd be more than willing to help you with some ideas. If you want to work on a parody with someone who has already written parodies, I can work with you or pair you up with one of Webster's other prolific parody artists (e.g., take a look at "The Very First Woman" written by Jeff James and Lisa Bloomfield). Don't be afraid that your parody will be terrible. To the Lord, they're all great. The only way you're going to write great parodies is by writing a bunch of lame ones to begin with (I know, I've still got a ways to go before I start writing great parodies :-)). As Nike says, just do it. However, if you feel you are incapable of writing a parody for some special occasion, contact me and I'll see if there is someone who might be able to crank one out for you.

"Will You Record a Parody for Me?"

The story goes something like this: someone has a neat parody they've written and they ask someone like ApologetiX or Mark Bradford to use their parody on their next CD. These bands reply that they only do their own parodies, legal issues prevent them from performing others' parodies. Sooner or later, the person comes across Webster and asks me if I will record the parody for them.

Now I don't have the legal issues associated with recording these parodies. So from that perspective, I can record parodies by request. To date, I've had about a half dozen request and not a single one has panned out. The problem is that I'm not a musician. I'm totally dependent upon finding the music (in MIDI form) on the internet for the songs that record (and the files have to be somewhat decent if I'm going to bother recording the song - there are a lot of really bad MIDI files out there). Once I've got a good MIDI file, figure it takes about eight hours of my time to record a parody, assuming my voice is anywhere near appropriate for the tune. In the past, the primary reason I haven't been able to help people has been the lack of music (MIDI file) for the tunes. This was fortunate in a couple of cases because I wouldn't have been able to do a decent job on the vocals anyway.

Now, if you want me to record your parody just so you can hear it, I'll be more than happy to quote you a price at my standard (software engineering) consulting fees to do the job.

On the other hand, if you've got a ministry going on that you'd like to use a specific parody and none of the parodies on Webster will work in its place, go ahead and contact me and we'll see what my time is like. Although it has never worked out in the past, I am willing to consider any proposal you might have, particularly for youth-oriented ministries. However, if you would like me to spend the time recording the song for you, I do expect you to do a little legwork first. It helps tremendously if you would search for and audition several MIDI files before contacting me. You can find MIDI files on the internet by searching (with any search engine, like Altavista or Google) for the name of the song + MIDI. For example, if you have a parody of The Beatles' "Let It Be" you'd search for "Let It Be MIDI" or maybe even "Let It Be Beatles MIDI". This should bring up dozens of possibilities. Visit each of the sites and preview the files (almost any sound card today is capable of playing a MIDI file directly from your browser). You'll want to listen to at least two or three different variations of the song in MIDI format (if available) and pick the best one. It's important to find a MIDI file that has a "melody track" (that is, it plays the melody while playing the song). Recording without the melody track takes anywhere from twice to ten times as long if I'm not intimately familiar with the song (generally it involves me having to go out at buy the original song recording, too). Once you've got all that, then we can talk about whether my weak vocal skills are going to be able to produce anything reasonable for your project.

Note: I cannot make a parody recording based on the original recording. Sorry, there is no effective way to "remove the vocals" from a song and use the existing music. Yes, I know there is software that claims to do this (I even have some). It doesn't work well for parodies. Such software drops the volume of the lead vocals down quite a bit (but doesn't totally eliminate it). It doesn't generally work well on background vocals at all (depending on how the song was mixed). This works okay for Karaoke (where you're singing the original lyrics), but it doesn't work for parody tunes. Sorry.