Whitney Avalon - "Clearly Obsessed" (Response to "Fuck You")

I love Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" and I love answer songs, so this is just perfect. As you would expect, there are plenty more responses out there, this is just the standout.

Everybody Was In The French Resistance - "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N"

It's a pretty simple video, but it totally works. My favorite part is where Argos tries to dance. And just in case it wasn't clear who the song was responding to, Avril's name and photo pop up a few times. I would love it if this led to a response song by Avril. Hank Ballard came out with a whole series of "Annie" songs after Etta James' responded to his hit with a bigger hit of her own, "The Wallflower".

Everybody Was In The French Resistance - Fixin' The Charts

Everybody Was In The French Resistance, a side project of Art Brut's Eddie Argos and the Blood Arm's Dyan Valdés, revives the long tradition of answer songs. They seemingly chose a random assortment of pop songs to respond to from Michael Jackson to Bob Dylan to Kanye West. I'm not sure these will ever reach the heights of Etta James' "Wallflower" or Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", but it's surprising how consistently good and cohesive the album is. The songs are all entertaining and clever even if you don't know the original songs, although listening to each song back to back with its inspiration is a lot of fun. In particular I like "GIRLFREN (You Know I Got A)", a response to Avril Lavigne' s "Girlfriend", and "Superglue", a response to Elastica's "Vasaline". All the songs are loaded with pop culture observation and undeniably Argos, especially "Walk Alone", which is just as good on its own.