I've got parodies on the brain. A parody is any form of copying or mimicking of an existing work or person's style. Parodies are used for satirical purposes, commentary, critique, or just to be funny. What really defines the parody is the re-use of original material, and the art of parodying music has been around much longer than you may think, though not always in the now-prevalent humorous sense. Early composers fused older works into their own, hybridizing the result. It is hard not to just chalk this up as plagiarism, because the difference is subtle. The difference is easier to see with humorous parodies.
"Weird Al" Yankovic built his career around the Fair Use (Section 107) of the Copyright law. He takes popular songs and rewrites the lyrics, but keeps the spirit of the song intact (and usually everything else). Under Fair Use, parodies are allowable because the parodied result does not detract from the marketability of the original. Fans will still go out an buy the original music and not the altered version. They may still buy the funny version anyway, but it won't take away from original artist's work because the original artist still created the work in the first place.
Another kind of funny parody is "genre parody", where a group reworks songs within a specific genre, such as rap or heavy metal and presents it in a radically different way, such as in Renaissance style or lounge music. Think Pat Boone singing Metallica's Enter Sandman, among others.
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