On the show today we sit down with musical parody master, Ryan Anderson and listen to a few of his parodies, talk about his origin story, discuss his creative process in songwriting and video creation, learn about Ryan’s thoughts on imposter syndrome and discover how shipping and sticking with it are critical to success in content marketing.
“Work Hard To Make It Make Sense.”
Ryan Anderson is a marketer, composer, musician, and video producer from the UK that believes in the power of musical parody to transmit ideas and feelings to an audience with impact. He’s been an English teacher, an insurance technician, a business development executive, and is an absolute joy to follow on social media.
You Want To Honor The Original As Much As You Can
It’s no easy trick to write a good parody. If the topic is too esoteric or obscure, or if you stray too far from the original, the audience is lost. It’s a balancing act of blending the right theme with the right song and the right rhymes. According to Ryan, “Sometimes the best things happen in the bathroom! Sometimes it’s a flash, sometimes it’s very easy, and the story tells itself. The hard work is the rhyming. I try to rhyme as much as possible with the original version at several points per sentence. I actually made a document that maps out the rhyme points to show how it lines up. You want to honor the original as much as you can, and the hardest work is the rhyming – sometimes there’s only so many things that can rhyme.” It’s key to spend this kind of time and effort to make it click – “The more connections people can make with a creative idea, the easier it will be to swallow.”
Like most other forms of creativity, making parodies involves a certain amount of risk taking and leaps of faith. “We undersell ourselves, we think we aren’t as good as we are,” says Ryan. Everyone experiences some self doubt – “I think I could have done better, do they think I could have done better? But they are blown away, so maybe there’s something there. Your feelings can be wrong, your thoughts can lie to you. I can’t always put out the perfect thing, but I can put out the best I can and hope it makes the point.” For Ryan, using the format and thematic restrictions of the parody can be the key to pushing past imposter syndrome,” Sometimes stretching beyond what you’re used to, it puts you in a spot where you have happy accidents. That’s what gets you past the uncertainty.”
References & Resources
Ryan Anderson – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-mark-anderson/
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