Bermuda said one of the two songs - so either the Al or the Elton song - was mentioned in the initial thread, and that the Elton song was not a single of his. I've read through the thread 3 times and I can only find 6 songs.
minnick27: "Was it
Hardware Store?"
AccordionChick: "I know the speculation should be elsewhere, but I thought somewhere I heard
"Nature Trail To Hell" sort of sounds like
"Funeral For A Friend"..."
mrmeadows: "My uneducated guess would be
"Cable TV" ... Also, I know
"Don't Wear Those Shoes" has been compared more to a style parody of The Kinks, but it came out just a couple years after Elton's
"Who Wears These Shoes?", so always wondered if that's where Al got the inspiration to write DWTS."
All other mentions of Elton songs in that thread were singles and therefore not applicable. So the list we're working from, from which we're picking exactly one song, is:
"Hardware Store" - Al
"Nature Trail to Hell" - Al
"Funeral for a Friend" - Elton
"Cable TV" - Al
"Don't Wear Those Shoes" - Al
"Who Wears These Shoes" - Elton
On May 16, mrmeadows first asked if the Al song "has since been popularly identified as being a style parody of a different artist," then guessed the combination of Cable TV/Take Me to the Pilot. Bermuda's reply is what intrigued me. He reminds us that he won't confirm until both songs are correctly identified, not just one or the other, HAMSTERS. This seems to me like his way of saying that mrmeadows got one of his guesses right, not both. Bermuda was not otherwise prompted to remind us of his rules, esp. in such a specific way and with such a pleasant emoticon.
But did mrmeadows guess "Cable TV" correctly? NO, because Bermuda also said the Al song is not associated with any other artist, and "Cable TV" is considered a style parody of Randy Newman. So says Weird Al Wikia:
http://weirdal.wikia.com/wiki/Cable_TV.
This means 1.) "Take Me to the Pilot" is the right Elton song, and B.) since "Take Me to the Pilot" was not mentioned in the original thread, the Al song has to come from that list. It's not "Cable TV." I absolutely would not believe it's "Hardware Store" or "Nature Trail to Hell" because logic. That leaves just one option.
I've listened to the two songs back and forth. They don't sound much alike at all, but they do share several little similarities. Elton's has solo piano breaks between chorus and verse, while Al's features a synthesized keyboard that gets a quick interrupting solo bit in the second half of the song (
http://youtu.be/Fi0xN499IXE?t=1m02s,
http://youtu.be/g2I97P7lOzw?t=2m30s). Also notice how both songs' titles are in the imperative voice. Elton's chorus tells you to "Take me to the pilot, lead me to the chamber," while Al's chorus (and basically the whole song) tells a woman what
not to do and what to do instead.
Two things: I know it's been mentioned that "Don't Wear Those Shoes" has been called a style parody of the Kinks, which would nullify it as an option the way "Cable TV" is nullified. But Weird Al Wikia says only the intro style-parodies the Kinks, and the rest is original, with no pastiche attributed:
http://weirdal.wikia.com/wiki/Don%27t_Wear_Those_Shoes. And number two, I know the instrumentation for Elton's and Al's songs are pretty different, but I don't think that matters. Once it didn't end up sounding like the Elton target, Al could have easily decided to make a few instrumental changes to take the song in a different direction,which would explain why Al's uses keyboard, not piano. Al once wrote in an Ask Al that that's what happened with "Hardware Store" - he "did it [his] own way instead."
http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#062806
So I'm reasonably confident in my answer.
Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz. By my line of reasoning, I deduce that the answer to your riddle is that "Don't Wear Those Shoes" was originally supposed to be a style pastiche of "Take Me to the Pilot" by Elton John.
If I'm wrong, I'm already out of ideas.