What makes a filk song "good?"

[figmo]

Other than the obvious "make sure the scansion and meter fits the original" when writing a parody, what makes a filk song an "award-winner" vs. "forgettable" (or one you'd like to forget)?

I don't know whether my own judgement is "off," but some of the songs that seem to jump out and grab the bulk of the filk community wouldn't even register with me had I not been figuratively clunked over the head with them. I'm wondering what I'm missing and hoping I'll pick up some pointers that might help my own songwriting.

Any and all opinions are welcome.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Tastes differ; that's life. Beyond that, the nature of "award-winning" songs is a combination of at-least-decent writing and filkers' zeitgeist. Hmmn... that doesn't really answer your question, I know.

Let me back up and say that each songwriter can both play to her or his strengths and also stretch skills deliberately. Classic case: Michael "Moonwulf" Longcor writes gorgeous melodies and lyrics. But, teased with that reputation, he then wrote "Rhinotilexomania," which is one of the funniest gross-out songs I've ever heard. Know your strengths in songwriting. Use them. Then develop others.

One of your strengths, if no one has hit you over the head with it, is setting up an ironic contrast between the melody and the lyrics. You do that repeatedly over two or three verses, and I'm on the floor. I suspect it's because you have a "sweet" voice, and so you can use the contrast between your tone and the lyrics (though I don't know what goes on in your head when writing). But since you have that voice, you should also write serious songs that can use it to good effect in a different way. (See Sherman open mouth. See Sherman stick foot in mouth because he doesn't know Lynn's repertoire.)

I know that I can write a sing-along. That's something I deliberately pushed myself to do 5-10 years ago, in part because I started writing each song with writing and working with the chorus. In the last few years, I've written an average of one love song a year—not necessarily coinciding with Valentine's Day, but you get the picture. And so locally (if not in other circles), I have the reputation of writing romantic songs.

There's also a skill in covering other people's songs that can help songwriting, I'm convinced. When I knew I was coming out to Consonance a few years ago, I scrambled to find songs from Southeast filkers that (a) I could cover competently and (b) would be crowd-pleasers or -stunners. In doing so, I had to think very carefully about how an audience was listening to and interacting with a song. In some cases, I decided to do a song where I could get that interaction going. In others, I had to think about it quite a bit. And in one case, I knew that I could perform the song better than the songwriter could and get an audience to listen to it more carefully. In another (Larry Kirby's "Redneck Pagan"), I changed the melody because I thought I could do it better with that melody and get the crowd going better with that than with his chosen melody (which is fine, but which I knew I'd muff).