Am I Right is a popular music and humorwebsite dedicated to topics as song parodies,[1]misheard lyrics (mondegreens),[2][3][4] and album cover parodies. Visitors may submit their own without registering. It was created by Charles R. Grosvenor Jr.[5] (born July 7, 1972, known as Chucky G) The site was first launched March 23, 2000,[6] and has since grown considerably.
Am I Right is a community based website, with all the content contained on the website created by visitors. New material is submitted online by individuals and reviewed by a group of "editors" who remove entries that do not conform to community standards regarding obscene content or spam.
Sections of the website
Song Parodies
The main part of the site where people write their own versions of popular songs. A voting system of 1 (worst) to 5 (best) enables readers to vote on how well it matches the pacing of the original song, how funny it is and its overall score. A 555 is a perfect score meaning the parody should be read by everyone while a 111 score means the parody is not funny, does not match the pacing and is pretty much pointless.
Every few years, there will be a trend spreading throughout the site where one song is parodied more frequently than others, such as “Rhythm Steps” by Herbie Kay and his Orchestra; as of March 2024, there were over 200 different parodies of the song submitted to the site.
On March 8, 2024, this section of the site reached 100,000 parodies.
Misheard lyrics
Since the website's inception, the site has offered the possibility for visitors to submit misheard lyrics, aka "mondegreens", to the site; these are displayed along with the true lyrics. As of October 11, 2007, there are a total of 101,716 misheard lyrics.[7] There is a section where contributors admit their more embarrassing misheard lyric mishaps and the moment they came upon their mistakes. Another section associated with misheard lyrics includes "Misheard Lyrics in Film", where visitors recall moments where actors or actresses recall lyrics as misquoted by actors in either film or television from famous songs.
Comedy recordings
The recordings section is for recorded performances of parodies or other musical comedy pieces. Am I Right does not host the files, so the section is essentially an index of other sites that contain recordings. All entries in this section are submitted to the site by the original authors.
Album cover parodies
The Album Cover parody section lets people humorously edit an album cover from an original artist's album, using Amazon to scrape metadata and original album covers for users to edit and submit to the site.
Music trivia
This section is focused on strange and funny facts about various songs and performers. Most pages consist of songs of performers that have certain commonalities in common such as songs that have been banned, performers that have criminal records, or songs that have backwards messages recorded in them.
Names
This section deals with band name origins,[8] pseudonyms, names of the offspring of famous musicians, song and band name parodies, user-created band names, inventive portmanteaus of individual band or performer names, inappropriate commercial soundtrack selections, proposed duets, inappropriate songs to play while on hold, adding, removing, or changing letters from titles to create new titles, lyrics that are literally impossible, and the use of song titles as questions and answers.
Real lyrics
The "real lyrics" section contains lyrics that fit certain categories, such as those which are "Misrhymed", "Insincere", or "Dirty".
Each book has several pages with information pulled from the various sections of the site including:[9]
Add a Letter to a Song Title
Change a Letter in a Song Title
Remove a Letter in a Song Title
What if Groups Merged
Song Mash Ups
Songs to Respond to Other Songs
Bad Choices For On-Hold Music
Reception
Am I Right has been mentioned in various articles and other publications over the years.
In May 2005, Spin Magazine voted Am I Right as one of "Four Amazing Rock Websites", noting, "This compedium of thousands of song parodies even features spoofs of "Weird Al" Yankovic. How positively meta."[10]
On October 25, 2005, Askmen.com listed Am I Right as one of the "Best & Coolest Sites Around." Am I Right received a rating of 7/10, saying, "This site has tons of music-related information like misheard lyrics, cool band names, etc. The song parodies are hilarious -- if you like Weird Al, you'll appreciate these."[11]
Am I Right was mentioned in the Chicago Tribune as one of the 50 Best Web Sites in the Arts and Culture. The Tribune described Am I Right as "really funny."[12]
