Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime
By Michael Spradlin. Illustrated by Jeff Weigel.
Something inside me died when I read/sang my way through this latest literary exploitation of the undead.
It’s strictly a songbook, line-for-line rewrites in which loving and romancing is replaced with biting and eating.
That doesn’t bother me. The humor may not be delectable, but it’s not indigestible. An average/mediocre exercise in song parodies.
But the death I notice in the strained verses of Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime are not the rotting renanimated corpses poised to sink their teeth into singing. My stomach turned instead at the songs these undead had chosen to sing.
This book, for me, signals the utter demise of showtunes, as distinct from pop songs, as vehicles for satire.
Showtunes are ideal vehicles for song parodies. They’re written for strong, well-though-out characters and tend to have lots of pronouns in them. When you parody a showtune, you have extra tools available.
When you parody a pop song, on the other hand, you’re working with words that tend to be simple and direct to the point of meaninglessness. Often they’re barely essential to the song, as they’re often overwhelmed by the vocal, instrumental or production style.
This isn’t snobbery. Those are the requirements of the different genres. Hooks and catchiness are primary to pop tunes but secondary to showtunes. Likewise, showtunes have to worry about integrating themselves into a grander plot and score, and pop songs don’t.
But Broadway songs aren’t synonymous with pop songs anymore. They’re not nearly as pop, or as popular. Not enough people will get the parodies. This was an uphill struggle even for Forbidden Broadway, which served a cult audience of Broadway fanatics and had trouble touring out of town with the results.
It was MAD magazine that fought the good fight for song parodies, half a century ago. Sued by music publishers for running parody lyrics with suggestions that they be “sung to the tune of…” copyrighted melodies, MAD went to court and won a landmark freedom-of-speech decision. But even MAD doesn’t bother with song parodies anymore. Too limiting, one imagines.
So Broadway gets more and more precious and acquired-tasteful, until even zombies don’t want to sink their teeth into it.