Reply To: JoCo Elevator Pitch
it's easy to lose the thread of something when it starts off with unrecognized technical terms. kind of like every time i try to read an article in scientific american about astrophysics. the reason i say style parodies… it's subtle.
bossa nova is generally pretty sexualized or at least romantic, whereas coulton's bossa nova number is about (among other things) innocence and childhood.
the beach boys (from what i understand – i'm not extensively familiar with their ouevre) have a lot of numbers about dating the ladies, or cars, or the assorted other trappings of the particular style of masculinity they embodied, whereas stroller town applies many of those conventions to an infant, in a way that makes it seem comical and risible.
soft rocked takes soft rock and, according to one reading, completely subverts the empathy and sensitivity which characterises the style. heck if you go by the more innocent reading then it's subverting the presumed suavity and seductive savvy that your soft rock narrators will generally display.
they all sort of use the style while reversing one or two conventions of the genre. so it's "style parodies" not in the sense that he's using a style to make a parody, but that he's parodying the style itself.
jmonkee's right, though. if you are actually pitching this to someone verbally, you'd have better results with a simplified description. my proposal might work better in print or similar than in conversation.