Parodies of Madonna and Kate Bush

[David]

One of the gals from KATH & KIM did this video parody of Madonna's FROZEN. It's kind of funny. The original FROZEN video was influenced by Gautier & Aubrey Beardsley, & that nouveau thing is what's parodied here.



I was looking around on YouTube for other musical parodies, & I found this great one of Kate Bush. You can identify four or six Kate Bush tunes in this mockery-snockery, including THEM HEAVY PEOPLE, VIOLIN, & of course OH ENGLAND MY LIONHEART.



Kate Bush is an excellent source of parody. What do I like about Kate Bush?

1. She's an idiosyncratic singer.
   
2. She's a very weird songwriter with the stamp of personal vision & style.
   
3. She's very gifted as a track arranger & orchestrator, & her scale stretches from miniature (e.g., SUSPENDED IN GAFFA) to epic (e.g., THE NINTH WAVE).
   
4. Her albums have emotional power, lyricism, wit, & complexity (relative to the rest of pop music).

If you have THE SENSUAL WORLD, listen to the intricate track she creates for the title song. I've provided the skeletal framework in staff notation here.




Listen for the oddball use of instruments (fiddle, bouzouki, uillean pipes, drums & bass but no lead guitar), & how understandingly she paints a sonic homage to Molly's interior monologue that closes ULYSSES.

My big problem with her: There's an extreme of high-toned literary reference in a lot of her lyrics. Her humor usually lightens or enlivens her silly wintry romanticism (e.g., LEAVE IT OPEN or BABOOSHKA), but sometimes she strikes one as fey & precious. I don't think she's one of the great pop lyricists, but she's usually able to fuse her words with a transformative soundscape so that this or that banality doesn't stick out or ruin things. She's a great pop alchemist: her whole is greater than the sum of her parts. Another problem I have with her: She's hooked on the mime & dance of Lindsay Kemp, & that crap has infected her video work.