Surround Sound - December 2023

[SamKat9]

As promised, here is the version performed for the YLVIS singer's fake funeral (staged for a TV show). Not surprisingly, this sparked some rumors and concerns that the singer had actually died.

[Amanda Hugginkiss]

It seems to me that if the wrong answer fits (and I'd say it's more elegant because it doesn't require any extra steps), it should be accepted. It's not the solver's fault there was another layer that made everything much more difficult. I answered "Roar" by Katy Perry. It's an animal sound and its video has 1 billion views, but I didn't get the solve.

It would argue this answer doesn't "fit." The theme entries in this puzzle are all longer phrases that have an animal sound hidden inside them. "Roar" is just an animal sound by itself, which doesn't fit any pattern established by the puzzle. If you could find a song title that had an animal sound hidden inside it and whose music video had over 1 billion views, then I would say yes it fits. There have been a couple MMMM puzzles where Pete has accepted an alternative answer because of exactly what you're describing; the one that immediately comes to mind is this one (see the paragraph beginning "A total of 19 solvers..."). But I don't think that reasoning applies this month.

That makes a lot of sense!

[m5rammy]

The theme entries in this puzzle are all longer phrases that have an animal sound hidden inside them. "Roar" is just an animal sound by itself, which doesn't fit any pattern established by the puzzle.

By that same argument "The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?)" should not be acceptable, it doesn't have any animal sound hidden in the title.
It "doesn't fit any pattern established by the puzzle"