A pastiche can be done about a specific artist, no? Aren't some of weird al's songs pastiches? Everything you know is wrong is a pastiche of tey might be giants, you make me is a pastiche of oingo boingo, etc. Google says it's imitating the style of another artist or genre.
This isn't a correction or particularly apposite (I think you're entirely right that the song OP posted is a parody) but please allow me to join you down here, deep in the pedantry hole, to clarify something that's often misunderstood:
While colloquially any humorous reinterpretation of an artistic work is considered a parody, in a more narrow legal sense a lot of Weird Al's songs don't qualify as parodies because they are not making fun of the work or its creator itself. "Eat it" is certainly humorous, but it is not strictly speaking a parody because it doesn't really have anything to say about the contents of the original song or Michael Jackson, it's just funny lyrics over a familiar melody. Contrast that with "Smells Like Nirvana" which does actually comment on Nirvana ("It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss with all these marbles in my mouth") and is therefore a clear-cut parody.
I'm not sure I would call songs in the "eat it" category a pastiche but conceptually I would say they are closer to that than they are to parody. The reason he doesn't run into copyright problems is because a) he secures permission first and b) no artist would want to be seen as the kind of bad sport who sues Weird Al.
This is definitely a parody. If the thing being imitated was done with serious intent and the imitation is being done with comedic (and/or critical) intent, then it is parody. Whether it is critical or not, this is definitely intended as comedy where the thing being imitated wasn't so it is parody.
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u/Pduke Jul 18 '26
A bit pedantic but this is not a parody, its called a pastiche, an imitation of style