I once heard a story about a large farm property in Tennessee on which several families comfortably live. They all belong to one family tree and dwell in single-family homes built on distant corners of the property. Thanksgiving holiday, I would like to imagine, is pretty awesome.
This relative utopia is entirely funded by…are you ready for this?… song royalties from “Grandma Got
Run Over by A Reindeer”.
When musicians get together, they don’t talk about music. They talk about money. And to me this story
reinforces the monetary value of owning a song, even a stupid one, that has permeated our culture.
Here’s another study case:
All of Weird Al Yankovic’s songs are legally considered “parodies” and thus he does not have to share
royalties with the songwriters he ridiculed. As a teenager, I couldn’t turn off these music videos fast
enough. But now, with two kids to put through college, I view Weird Al as a business genius. His
royalty-generation strategy was guaranteed to win before he even set foot in a studio.
And so one evening while jogging in the park a vocal chorus hook arrived in my head. It sounded like
Kelly Clarkson singing “Poooopy diaper, poooopy diaper” on top of a driving dance beat with complete and utter emotional conviction. Not a drop of irony in her delivery.
Several weeks later, again while jogging, another nugget entered my brain. This one was a straight
parody of 2 Live Crew’s “Too Much Booty in the Pants”. But in my version, they were saying “Too much
poopy….” (which is what I always thought they were saying anyway).
I would love to sit here and tell you the universe dropped a song in my lap that undoubtedly brings more love to our planet. A song about human relationships that bestows just one more sorely needed modicum of peace and understanding to mankind.
But it didn’t. It dropped “Poopy Diaper” into my lap and I’m gonna run with the idea. This blog is part I of a series in which I’ll document my experience writing, producing and marketing a novelty song with one singular, and selfish goal….to own the publishing rights to a song that has permeated culture.
Stay tuned.
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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 23,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com.