There is no such thing as "Christian Music" Only Christian lyrics. This page is dedicated to describing how an aspiring parodist/lyricist can write the lyrics God originally intended for many songs.

What is a Parodeity?

The term "Parodeity" is the obvious merging of the two words "parody" and "deity". This is a term I've invented to specifically describe the music genre that consists of rewriting the lyrics of existing (secular) songs to present a Biblical message. I have also used the term "Second Chances" to describe this genre, though that term doesn't have anywhere near the "self-definition" value that "Parodeities" has.

Why not simply use the widely accepted term "parodies" to describe this genre? I chose a new term for a couple of reasons:

There's nothing preventing a Parodeity from being a true parody as well (some of the Parodeities appearing here on Webster are also true parodies), but Parodeities don't have to fulfill everyone expectations for what a "parody" should be; and that's an important distinction.

Why Should You Write Parodeities?

Quite frankly, the main reason you should write Parodeities is for the entertainment value – specifically, your own entertainment. Writing Parodeities can be a lot of fun and it's both challenging and fulfilling to create a really good Parodeity. Some legalistic types might want to argue that you should be concentrating on praising the Lord rather than having fun, but this is silly; there is nothing wrong with having fun while you're praising the Lord and I'd argue anytime that having fun writing Parodeities is probably better than most of the fun you can have doing secular activities.

Another use for Parodeities is as a worship/witness tool. Some people will criticize the ministry of some artists like ApologetiX saying that their music will never win anyone to Christ. The argument such individuals use is that some die-hard heathen metal-head is not going to accept Christ just because you've changed the words of their favorite song to have a Christian flavor; they're more likely to be offended by the parody than be drawn closer to the Lord. Of course, different people are affected in different ways, so one can never make a general statement like this and expect it to be true in all cases, but for the typical case I would have to agree with this attitude – if you're interested in reaching those who've heard the word and have rejected it outright, Parodeities are probably going to do very little to change their attitudes about Christianity. So if you're a masochist and you're looking for a way to reach those hard-core individuals who've rejected the Lord, you should probably look for another mechanism to use. Attempting to use Parodeities will, more likely, increase the contempt they have for the Church.

The best time to reach the unsaved is before they've hardened their hearts. Believe it or not, the largest number of unsaved people you will find, who are open to accepting Christ, are sitting in Sunday School classes all over the world: our youth. The best time to reach these kids with the Gospel message is before they reach the age when they decide that Jesus is definitely "uncool" based on peer pressure. This is one area where Parodeities can really help. In particular, consider the plight of a typical fourth through sixth grader (ages about 9-12). On the one hand, they're listening to typical pop songs on the radio and idolizing their favorite pop artists at school with their friends, on the other hand, they're often stuck singing "definitely uncool" songs like "Jesus Loves Me" or "Deep and Wide" on Sunday mornings because the "old grandma" teaching the Sunday School class doesn't have a clue what the kids like at that age. Even if you have a progressive Sunday School teacher that uses contemporary children's Christian music in the program, the "Jesus Loves Me" stigma is forever attached to Christian music and it's difficult for them to get really excited about the music when few of their peers listen to that material. This is where Parodeities can help. By basing a Parodeity on an existing pop tune, you provide a instant point of reference to which the kids can immediately relate. Assuming you choose a tune the kids like, you'll have their immediate attention when performing or teaching them the song (contrast this to a completely new CCM composition that you'd have to make them sing over and over many times before they'd be acclimated enough to start enjoying it). Furthermore, it gives them a tool by which they can discuss Christianity with their friends without coming off as being totally uncool (i.e., they can avoid the "Jesus Loves Me" effect).

Of course, kids aren't the only ones who like Parodeities. Their older siblings and their parents (and grandparents) will probably like them as well. Quite honestly, I don't have a problem listening to a lot of the secular music that I grew up with (of course, it helps that I've been a Christian all my life, so I was somewhat selective about the music I listened to in the first place, but I don't feel that I've had to give up secular music in order to be a "good" Christian). Many people, particularly new Christians, however, do feel somewhat guilty about taking pleasure in listening to non-Christian music once they've accepted Christ. I'm not going to get into the argument of whether this attitude is right or wrong other than to say that it's a personal decision – it's right for some people, it's not necessary for others. Parodeities offer a way for those individuals who've given up secular music to continue to enjoy the music they used to love with a Christian theme. I've received dozens of emails thanking me for putting the Parodeities up on Webster because the email's author could now avoid feeling guilty when singing the music that they've always loved but felt they had to give up once they became a Christian.

Parodeities Will Make You Rich and Famous! Not!

ApologetiX is probably the most popular Christian band that does Parodeities. They've put out a large number of CDs and probably spend a half of each year on the road touring. They've got tens of thousands of fans and their CDs regularly make it onto the CCM charts. Wouldn't it be nice to be rich and famous like them?

First of all, parodies are just a novelty. Though some 'Weird Al' fans might disagree, no one has ever become a superstar by doing a novelty act. The good thing about doing Parodeities is that they provide a base that's instantly familiar to your audience and this will, initially, open some doors for you that would otherwise be shut if you were performing original material. However, the flip-side of this is that a novelty act will also limit how far you can go, professionally, with the material. For example, ApologetiX has achieved modicum of success, but it's doubtful they'll ever be as popular as, say, Amy Grant or even Audio Adrenaline in the CCM arena. And to achieve the success they have, ApologetiX has had to work really hard. For the first ten years of their existence they were touring every weekend playing anywhere someone would let them. Most of them held "real" jobs during this time. And despite the small measure of success God has given them for all their hard work, it's not like any of them are going to be retiring comfortably anytime soon. Their continued success simply means they get to work that much harder because they've got more shows to perform each year and people are expecting better quality from each new CD they produce.

If you're looking for some measure of respect as an artist, you definitely want to avoid any type of novelty act. Don't believe me, just post a message to the rec.music.christian internet newsgroup sometime extolling the virtues of writing parodies. You'll be immediately overwhelmed by a tidal wave of flames from self-proclaimed "CCM critics" who feel that there is no talent needed at all to write parodies and those who do so are simply "riding on the coattails of other artists." Such criticism isn't warranted – writing a good Parodeity does take a fair amount of skill and the fact that such "critics" cannot recognize this, nor appreciate this, really brings their status as a self-proclaimed "critic" into question (anybody can gripe about things they don't particularly like, a true critic is someone who can appreciate the work and skill required in genres that they're not particularly fond of and provide a review of such work without undue influence by their personal biases). Nevertheless, the public at large, fairly or unfairly, also feels that somehow it requires less talent and skill to produce parodies than it does to produce original music. For some reason, it's okay for one person to write the music and another to write the words (e.g., Elton John and Bernie Taupin) if the song is original, but it's not as impressive when someone writes some music (e.g., as Elton John and Bernie Taupin have done for "Daniel") and them someone else writes a different set of words to the music (as J Jackson has done for Daniel). Why are Jackson's skills as a lyricist called into question but Taupin's are not? Jackson actually works under greater restrictions than Taupin (Taupin wrote his poetry first, Elton fit the music to it) whereas Jackson has to worry about the existing song's melody, rhythm, metre, and rhyme when writing parodies. Not to call into question Bernie Taupin's excellent lyrical skills, but he works under far fewer restrictions than Jackson. Nevertheless, your average person on the street doesn't appreciate this fact and the "riding on the coattails" attitude results in less respect for Jackson's work than he deserves.

Now J Jackson is probably one of the best lyricists in this genre. And he still has trouble with getting the respect he deserves (this is not unexpected, 'Weird Al' as the same problem in the secular world even though he has a much larger fan base than Jackson). It's not like J doesn't get any good press (actually, the band has been getting quite a bit of good press recently), but still, recent articles about the band's work are using terms like "cheesy" when describing Jackson's work; this is after lots of hard work, some excellent productions, and a fair amount of commercial success.

There are some hard-core fans of the genre (e.g., I just happen to be one) who can appreciate a good parody, but if you're looking for fame and fortune, seek it somewhere else. You'll get very little respect from anyone other than a few other hard-core types who've written a bunch of parodies themselves and a few die-hard ApologetiX or Mark Bradford fans. ApologetiX has demonstrated that, with a lot of hard work, you can make a living at this; but getting rich is probably out of the question.

Copyright Issues

[Note: this section discusses the copyrights that apply to your own work rather than the issue of whether writing parodies infringes on other's copyrights. That issue is discussed elsewhere on Webster. See the section on Parodeity legal issues by clicking here.]

So you've just written your first Parodeity masterpiece. How do you protect it from being used by unscrupulous musicians who might make a fortune off it without giving you just compensation? In other words, how can you copyright your material to protect yourself?

First of all, please bear with me while I make a small political statement and describe how the copyright law was intended to operate and how one should approach copyrights on parodies.

The original purpose of the (U.S.) copyright law was to encourage people to create intellectual property and make it available to the public at large. When this country was founded, it was common for people to create something and then keep it to themselves because they derived some benefit from having something that no one else had (obviously, this concept probably did not apply to songs, but think of tables of mathematical computations, recipes, or manufacturing processes to get an idea of the commercial advantage of keeping something secret). Congress authorized the use of copyrights to protect an idea for a limited amount of time to encourage the creator or discoverer of an idea to release that idea to the public so that society could benefit (back then, many of these secret processes and ideas went to the grave with their discoverers/inventors and were lost for all time). The most important thing to realize about the copyright law is that its intent was not to protect works, but just the opposite really, to make those works available so society could use them (in theory, the copyright on a piece of intellectual property is supposed to expire after some time period at which point the material should revert to the public domain). Therefore, you should take the attitude that a copyright is some God-given right that you deserve for having created something. A copyright is a grudging agreement from the Government that you can exercise certain control over your works for a limited period of time in exchange for releasing your information to the public domain when that time period expires.

From a legal point of view, your parodies are just as copyrightable as original material. Indeed, treated as poetry, apart from the original music to which you've set your lyrics, your (well-written) parody is an original piece of work and is just as eligible for a copyright as the original lyrics (note, however, that a performance of your parody using the original music may not be so eligible – see the section on legal issues elsewhere on Webster). Even if you "borrow" some material from the original lyrics of the song, as long as you can argue that your work is a true parody, the U.S. Supreme Court says that you can make a strong case that this is a "fair use" of the original material and you certainly have the right to copyright your parody (note, however, that if you do quote some material from the original song, you'd best consult a good copyright / patent / intellectual property attorney to determine your chances of succeeding in court if you get sued for copyright infringement). Therefore, you have every right (in the U.S., at least), to claim the copyright on your work and you (and your heirs) have the right to control the use of your intellectual property for the copyright period.

You do not have to do anything special to "copyright" your material. According to the Berne convention, the moment you create something you automatically have the rights to determine its use. In practice, however, it's always a good idea to register your copyright with the U.S Patent Office. You can pay a copyright lawyer to do this for you, or you can simply go to the nearest Post Office, pick up the forms, and for a few dollars register it yourself. The advantage of registering your copyright with the U.S. Patent Office (or whatever local Government agency handles this task if you're outside the U.S.) is that you'll have a better chance of winning a lawsuit if litigation ever occurs over your material (i.e., someone sues you or you sue someone else).

Having seen the mechanics of the copyright law, let's now take a look at what having that copyright will buy you. A copyright gives the holder and his/her heirs control over the use and reproduction of the copyrighted material for a set period of time (which is usually some number of years after the author's death, guaranteeing a minimum time period for the heirs if the material was created shortly before the author's death). This is not absolute control; the copyright law provides for restricted use of the material without remuneration or permission under the "fair use" clause of the copyright law. Nevertheless, the copyright holder does have to right to say who can publish the material, who can perform it, who can modify it, etc. Others may use portions of your material, without your explicit permission, for certain teaching, criticism, or even parody purposes, but by and large, you get to control how people use the material.

You can also put your material directly into the public domain by explicitly stating that you've released your material to the public domain (PD). For example, I've explicitly done this with the Parodeities I've written and put on Webster. Note that you must explicitly release your material to the PD if that's your intent; remember, the default (if you don't say anything) is that you've got an implicit copyright on the material.

From an ethical point of view, I personally take a dim view of most individuals who copyright their parodies. After all, it's a loophole (well, not really, but a lot of media types believe this) in the copyright law's fair use clause that allows you to write parodies of some material without first obtaining the original author's permission to do so. Since you are basing your work on someone else's controlled material by exploiting a loophole, it seems somewhat inethical to insist on a protection of your own work. It's not like it's a sin or anything, but when your riding on someone else's coattails, it hardly seems fair to complain when someone jumps on your's as well.

Most people who write parodies operate on the "scorched Earth" principle: they realize they'll never make anything off their work, but they want to make sure nobody else profits from it, either. So they release the material with a copyright that effectively says "feel free to use this for non-commercial purposes, but contact me if you do anything that makes money off this – I want my share." Personally, I find this fear that "someone else might benefit from my work, even though I've written it off" to be highly irrational. If you've already written off your work as having no commercial potential, you've already resigned yourself to the fact that you'll never make any money off of it. Were someone else to use one of your parodies and get filthy rich off of it, you'd still be much better off than if your original belief about the parody's commercial viability were true (since, at the very least, you could point at the work and say "I did that"). On the other hand, when you slap a copyright on some work (either explicitly or implicitly) you effectively say "hands off – do not use." So you've got to decide: do you want people to actually use (perform, record) your parodies, or do you simply want them to read your parodies and think "what a cool person this is?" Quite honestly, a lot of people who might possibly perform your work in a Church service somewhere may be turned off by a copyright notice but would enthusiastically embrace the material if it were public domain. I've seen this here on Webster: I get emails all the time from people thanking me for making the parodies on my Parodeities page public domain so they could perform them; I've had only one request for permission to do a song on the "Not Invented Here" page (which contains copyrighted material). That doesn't mean that people aren't using those copyrighted songs (in violation of the copyright law), but it does suggest that the PD material is definitely more popular (by the way, "I'm a Believer" is, by far, the most commonly requested parody based on the emails I've gotten – just in case you're wondering). So keep in mind that by putting something in the PD you're making it more accessible and people will be (far) more willing to use it. So you've got to decide whether you'd rather retain control of the usage of your parodies or release in a form that allows the maximum number of people to use it. I've, obviously, opted to make my stuff as accessible as possible.

One big drawback to putting your stuff in the public domain is that you give up all control about how the song could be used. For example, a satanic cult could take one of your parodies and modify it for your own purposes despite any objections you might have (as a real-world example, consider the fact that Bryan Adams was able to stop KKK member David Duke from using his "Everything I Do" song as the theme song for the David Duke election campaign; Adams could not have done this if his song were in the public domain). Of course, the likelihood that this will happen is very low (though probably higher than someone getting rich off your work) so it's probably not a major concern.

Another good reason to put stuff in the public domain is to allow others to improve upon it. This is a hard one for many people to swallow. While we all probably realize that there are some individuals better than us in just about any endeavor, it's not easy to take criticism in the form of someone improving on work you're really proud of. However, keep in mind that writing Parodeities is really about praising God. By slapping a copyright on your parodies and saying "you can't change this one" you're effectively saying "my way is the only way to praise God on this one." The end result is that God winds up with less praise than He might have otherwise had. Is this really your intent? Maybe someone new is just getting started writing Parodeities and they'd prefer to take small steps by improving existing songs first before attempting to write one on their own. Do you really want to deny them this? And maybe, just maybe, you can learn quite a bit from having others rewrite your parodies. I speak from experience here. I've learned a lot more about writing Parodeities by looking at what Jeff James has done to my parodies than I've ever figured out on my own. When Jeff approached me about redoing some of my parodies I could have easily said "No. Write some original ones and the world will be better off for it." However, by placing my stuff in the public domain and allowing people like Jeff to make (major and minor) tweaks to my existing songs I have learned an incredible number of new techniques to employ in future parodies. Some might argue that the world would have been better off if Jeff had spent his time writing new parodies rather than rewriting mine (well, not really, it's not like Jeff hasn't written a ton of original parodies anyway), but I certainly benefited a lot from his rework.

So the choice is yours. You've got an implicit copyright on your original works and you get this implicitly (though you should file the paperwork if you want to be able to enforce your copyright). Do nothing (or file the paperwork) and you've got the right to control how people use your material. On the other hand, you could also explicitly release the material to the public domain and make it more accessible and usable. I've chosen the latter route because I'd rather take the (very tiny) chance that someone might get rich off my work and I wouldn't benefit, but make my stuff more accessible so more people will use it, than control my works to prevent someone from making money off me without me getting my fair share, but at the same time limit the use of my parodies by people out there. The choice is yours and other choice is defensible as a good choice; obviously I recommend the PD route, but your circumstances may be different than mine so the recommendation may not always apply.