Lessons from The Rutles – Songwriting Satire

This week we took a dive into the 1978 mockumentary – The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash – a satire of Beatlemania and the Fab Four. Aside from being one of the first mock-docs, it is also a very funny film featuring some Monty Python alumnae, a few famous faces from early SNL and one Beatle. But we at SongTalk (being very serious people) were mostly concerned with the music in the film – which amazingly good and very Beatle-esque. By comparing these fake songs with the very real Beatles tunes that inspired them, songwriters can discover many ways to appreciate and understand what made the original versions so memorable.

Topics like:

• what elements make a song distinctive?
• does satire automatically mean mockery?
• are The Beatles songs uniquely suited to copying?
• how can you be inspired by the writing, playing and production of your musical heroes and still make your own music?

Here is the film: All You Need Is Cash