Hello again, everyone. I bid you all Dark Greetings!
Our last songtest challenged the participants to do something new and outside of the box, stretching their comfort zones. In fact, I found out after the fact that one participant (hi, Irene!) misunderstood the prompt and submitted a song they'd
never heard, listening to it for the first time during the round.
After stretching ourselves so much, though, I think maybe we've been a little too adventurous. After all, new things may not necessarily turn a profit for the shareholders. Better to let someone else take on the liability, and then—once they prove successful—swoop in and do it again to enrich ourselves!
Yes, that's right. We're taking a page from Hollywood's books with our theme this time: Sequels and Remakes!
For this songtest, every submission must be a sequel to or a remake of another piece of media.
Please note that I'm using pretty specific definitions here, to help make this not just be "Covers Songtest" again. I understand that these may not be to everyone's tastes, but I have to draw a line somewhere and this is where I've chosen to do so!
Sequels: A "sequel" is a song that explicitly follows up on something else. It can be another song, but if you have a song that's a sequel to a movie, book, novel, etc. that's fine too. Sequels do not have to be by the same artist as the original. Making knock-offs of other people's stuff is a time-honored tradition!
Remakes: A "remake" is a song that redoes some other, older piece of media. For our purposes, I am requiring two things of remakes:
- They must be at least ten years newer than the thing they are remaking. Nobody watches a remake of something that just came out!
- They must be meaningfully transformative. I'm counting this as if the piece changes the words in a meaningful way, changes the genre of the piece, or changes the medium (say, adapting a novel to a song). So, an acoustic ukulele cover of a rap song (or a rap cover of an acoustic ukulele song) is fine, but a rock cover of a rock song is not, unless they rework the words or something. I'm not going to be incredibly picky on this—if you can give a legit argument I will give it to you.
For our purposes, remixes do not count as remakes. Translations do count as remakes; ripping off stuff from other languages is a time-honored remake tradition!
Remakes
can be by the original artist, or by someone else.
Then, of course, there is the dreaded "Requel"—a piece of media which is simultaneously a sequel and a remake. If you find one of these in song form, have at! If you find something that's close but only officially hits one or the other restriction, hey, that's fine too.
I will be asking for (and providing to the voting masses) a link to whatever each song is a sequel to/remake of. These will just be for fun and will not be required listening/reading/whatever.
Anyways, with that out of the way, the rest of the rules:
- [+] The Rules
- You can send me stuff by board PM, Discord, telephone call, whatever. Upon receipt, I will enter your votes in a spreadsheet and then let you know I received them. If I do not reply that I got your stuff, I do not yet have it! If more than a day passes without confirmation, please check in because it probably got lost in the shuffle.
- There will be one round if there are 15 or fewer entrants and two rounds if there are 16 or more. Rounds will last ~4 days if we're doing two plus finals or ~a week if it's just one. If we do two rounds, there will be a final round as well, with a number of songs remaining announced when voting for the first round starts. I'm expecting one round, but hey, surprises happen! A final works the same as normal rounds.
- Listen to every song in the round and rank favorite to unfavorite, 12 at the top, then 10, then 8, and then down by one per until you're out of songs or points. Do not vote for your own song, even if that means cutting off before giving out a 1. Note that in this case you're not expected to vote on how well each song manages to be a sequel to/remake of something else, though you're welcome to use that criteria if you want to! Just wanted to explicitly say no obligation to engage with the theme beyond making sure your own submission fits it.
- If your song is in a round, you must listen and vote or you get DQed and I sob into my spreadsheets. If your song is not in a round, or you're not even playing, you can still listen and vote! These votes are public and count for half.
- You can jump in after the first round if it's multi-round (but don't count on this) and you can change your song at any time before the round it's in is posted.
- Music's personal to people and putting stuff up for contest/discussion can be kinda scary and make people feel vulnerable. Please be nice in chat! It's totally cool to not like something and to talk about that and to dig into why at length, but please don't totally dunk on stuff. Everyone is here to share cool things with friends (or to fight tooth and nail for the crown but, you know, same dif).
- Your song should be a sequel or remake as defined by me above. You should include a link to what your song is a sequel to or remake of. If it's another song, I would love a YouTube link if possible. If it's something else, I would love a Wikipedia link if possible. But if the preferred link type isn't available, I'll take what you can get.
- No submitting songs that have already been in Songtest. I know we typically ban Eurovision and reality TV covers and such but I don't personally care, submit them if you want as long as they otherwise fit the prompt.
- If your song is over ten minutes nobody is obligated to listen beyond ten minutes (but it'd be nice if they did!)
- In the interests of total fairness I'll be completing my own vote either before each round starts or within the first two hours of the round so there's no possible temptation to put my finger on the scales. I probably won't be talking about song placements during the rounds.
- I'm pretty busy so do not count on reminders. I may PM people/post reminders/whatever or I may not. I probably won't. We'll see.
- No extensions unless something really dire happens IRL. There are more or less no stakes for getting DQed from Songtest anyways.
- Winner gets to host the next songtest. If they decline, that passes to second place, and so on.
- I reserve the right to add anything blazingly obvious that I forgot.
For those who don't wanna read everything, the highlights: normal deal, make sure it's a sequel or remake as defined above, link the thing it's derived from on YouTube or Wikipedia as you submit. No songs that people have submitted before, but if you wanna do Eurovision or Reality TV stuff that otherwise fits the prompt then you do you.
Sign-ups will run for a bit over seven days. They close at roughly 4:00 Pacific on Tuesday, August 27.
Recast Versions Of Classic Characters:
1. Me
2. DerArknight
3. Fiori
4. Irene
5. Dr. Adjective
6. TheLordOfAwesome
7. Laurels
8. Ahab
9. Zetsu
10. You?
etc.
If you have any questions about the contest or theme, feel free to hit me up wherever!
