Answer songs
Saturday, 31 October 2009
I love answer songs. Of course, in most cases the reasons why somebody made an answer song it will be inspired by the hope of earning some money. But it takes a special kind of creativity to come up with a good answer song.
I have no idea how many answer songs exist. It also depends on how you define an answer song. For me the answer song has to be musically and textually related to the original song. It doesn’t necessarily has to have the exact same melody. In fact, I love it when it has not. But the lyrics have to take the original lyrics a step further. Just making a genderbend of the original song is not enough. Best are answer songs where the singer views the situation, that is described in the original song, from a different standpoint.
As far as I know there are no compilations of answer songs available. That is strange, because without doing much effort I must have collected more than enough good ones to fill a CD. Here is a recent addition to my answer song collection, a gift from Pieter-still-without-a-website-Dorrenboom. I am not entirely sure yet if this song fits my own definition, but I like it still:
The reason why I picked this one is obvious: it is Halloween today. Not that I really care for calendar related festivities; it is mainly pure coincidence that I got this record around this time a year.