I've always wanted to know: how long, on average, does it take you guys to write a parody? From the initial idea phase, to the completed and submitted masterpiece (maybe).

Oh, and the title is a Madagascar quote.

It's getting the time to do it that screws me over.. I have so many ideas right now, from My Sister Is A Stripper (I'm In Love With A Stripper) to I'm Beautiful (You're Beautiful). Also, when I finally get the time to do it, it usually takes alot of editing and staying up all night to actually get it right or until I go "That's good enough, I should be sleeping or playing Half-Life 2 already" So it takes me, from idea to doing it, from a week to a month, and then doing it to finishing it is either a day or two or three. What I wanna know how long it takes YOU C.O.P? How long indeed?

I've always wanted to know: how long, on average, does it take you guys to write a parody? From the initial idea phase, to the completed and submitted masterpiece (maybe).

Oh, and the title is a Madagascar quote.


The ones that perform the best for me normally take three days or longer to fine tune.  To be honest, I've revisted my oldest songs a lot, everytime I go to record I'm "Oh, well this sounds better like this" or "That doesn't really make senes". . .time of course also depends a lot on what you want to do with a particular song.

How long is a piece of string?

Some go very quickly, some take longer - though it is (in my case, at least) much more a question of finding the right ideas than the words - trying to make sure that the song as a whole has balance and a story running all the way through.

One of the few I've timed, 'cause the idea came out pretty much fully-formed ("Carrot's in the Thong" to "Riders on the Storm") took 20 minutes from first thinking of the concept to finishing the parody, downloading a backing track and finishing the recording... the lyrics part took five minutes at most.  But that is somewhat unusual.

For most parodies, the idea tends to sit at the back of my head for a few days, then I'll sit down and write it up.  Which makes it difficult to say how long something takes to write.

The quickest good parody I've made was "Braunschweiger" (Brown Sugar, The Rolling Stones), in about 10 minutes--from writing to submitting. "I'm A Seal" and "Ketchup On My Toast" took about 5 minutes apiece.

The longest I have taken for a single tune since I found Amiright in 2004 probably would be either "Amphigorian Pie", "SLC", or "No Paradise At The Old Campsite"--a couple of days. "SLC" took a long time just for research! But when I get my mojo working, I rarely stop and start. On average, when I get the idea in my head with potential lines floating around, it takes a 45-50 minute train ride to or from work to get my scratch copy written to my satisfaction. I might change an additional word or two by the time I get it plugged onto the submission form.

In my earlier years, the longest was probably "The Unemployment Song", which might have taken a month or two in between daily living in 1989. Average time was probably a few hours.

I never write a parody unless I think it's a really good idea, and even coming up with the idea after saying "I want to parody this" can take days, weeks, or even months.

Writing can take the same amount of time, depending on stuff... sometimes I'll have an entire parody written except for ONE line, because I can't think of something good to go there, and some parodies will be half written for a few weeks before I finish them. Some parodies also tend to write themselves really well (BSOD, my parody of System of a Down's "BYOB" seemed to do that) others can be harder. A lot of times my parody will start off with the chorus already written and I write verses around that, sometimes the verses come to me first...

I've always wanted to know: how long, on average, does it take you guys to write a parody? From the initial idea phase, to the completed and submitted masterpiece (maybe).

Oh, and the title is a Madagascar quote.


On average, 4-5 hours: usually 30 minutes to an hour goes to finding the lyrics and properly formating/notating them so I don't have to listen to TOS 60 times over, and d/l TOS (if I don't already have it).

The idea is more or less an instant thing. Research on the topic may take an hour or so if I need it (like "The Cigarettes"). Writing the parody is a relatively quick affair, usually 2 hours tops. Proofchecking the work (in my minimalist way  ;)) and rewriting lines that are off-paced/misrhymed/not-so-funny is another hour or more.

It would take half that time if I could type as fast as I think.

I've written a parody from starting idea to completed parody in 5 minutes ("Smells Like Darwin Awards" and "Rate Me" (which I had deleted)). On the other extreme, I spent near triple digit hours over the course of two weeks writing "Prove Yourself".

I believe it was Charlie Decker who said that his better parodies are the ones that take the least time because they come naturally. I would tend to agree with that thought. Many of my better ones have taken less than 3 hours start to finish, though there are exceptions like "The Author", which took at least 10 hours of solid work to finish, and "The Rambler", which took 30 minutes tops.

I find now that with my schedule (only having really one day a week to write) any parody that I think will take longer than 8 hours to complete doesn't get written - coming back to pieces days or weeks later only makes me rewrite the initial lines and not get any further along in the piece.

Then there are ideas I think are really good that, upon later reflection, would not be so good. Two recent examples are "We're Wrecking The Edmund Fitzgerald" and "Die In A Fire" (parody of of "Beautiful Liar"). I've probably spent hundreds of hours dumping time into totally non-viable parody ideas, so factoring that in I'd say 6-7 hours per submitted parody would be my average.

Thanks guys.

For me, it definitely varies. I rarely have time to write, what with school and everything. But for nearly all of my parodies this month have been one sitting easy streets. The one that took me the longest to write would've been 'That Wreck Called The Volkswagen Beetle' or 'Transformer Pie'.

Incidentally, those records will be smashed once the Eminem round of Artistry rolls around.

I'm pretty much in agreement with everyone on some point or other, bobpie. Like many of the others, it's finding a good enough idea that takes the most time and effort. I have a folder full of half-written parodies, where I thought the initial idea was a corker, but once I started writing the parody just didn't pan out. I'd rather leave a parody than try to force it...I can always come back to it, and I rarely throw anything away. (My folder has about 50 works-in-progress in it)
Having said that, if I've got a REALLY good idea, a good OS to work with, and I'm "in the flow"....a medium length parody can be written in as little as 15-20 minutes. On the other end of the scale, "African Child" probably involved 4 hours of total writing time spread over 3 weeks, coz I just couldn't nail it.
Hope this helps

Once I got a real good idea that filled most of the song and I was able to finish in 10 minutes.  Usually I don't get ideas that will fill a whole song and it will still take hours to finish filling out the parody. 

Incidentally, those records will be smashed once the Eminem round of Artistry rolls around.


Eeep!  :o Good point. Maybe I better start on one before Dave's WMP pulls it up!

It really varies. I can grind out an Ages entry pretty easily, in about a half hour or so, whereas More Relations? No! took me about a month of off-and-on writing; the concepts for that came to me in spurts.

But that doesn't mean that all my longer parodies took me a very long time. After all, I rather infamously stated last year that it only took me two days to write my Major-General parody.  ::) Part of me wishes I could rewrite it to resolve all the pacing problems, but I don't really believe in that, and I'm worried that it would lose humor if I did that. And Things That Provoke My Ire only took about that long as well, partially because, well, there are a lot of things that annoy me, and since I'd had We Didn't Start The Fire memorized ever since I did a project on it in seventh grade, I knew the pacing like the back of my hand anyway.

Weeks on end when you have to argue with your witing partner.... ;)