Excellent take.
I think my favorite response to this was by the KLF in the late '80s. If you don’t know the KLF, they were these two amazing electronic musicians that made pretty killer music as The Timelords and The KLF (among other names) that was themed on fringe conspiracy theories about ancient illuminati, Sci-Fi, Doctor Who, and other unusual things, and were a total send-up live - they would get on “Top of the Pops” for gigs and show up dressed as druids, etc, and at one point simply deleted their entire catalogue and burned a million quid - all of their profits - just for shiggles.
Anyway at some point they looked around and said basically, “If all these talentless guys can make #1 hits, so can we.” So they studied, actually did it, and wrote The Manual.
It turns out The Manual, despite being a total send-up itself, actually worked. It worked for The KLF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk
It worked for Edelweiss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuWrg80dXeU
It worked for Chumbawumba:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkmIyC6v00
Those were all huge hits. It just worked 
Anyway these guys (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) were my heroes for a long time. One of them went on to found The Orb, one of the biggest electronica bands of all time.
If you don’t know them, I recommend checking them out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqxtBggVsi0
Love this bit with Tammy Wynette, it’s so deliciously weird and infectious.