This is the link to Hillary Clinton’s Soprano parody video. It starts out well with a shot of a diner in Mt. Kisco near my old office. It then proceeds to refer to the final scene of the Sopranos (complete with cameo by Vince Curatola, the actor who played Johnny Sack), with Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ playing through-out. I tried to have an argument with my M&S colleague Paul Fakler but couldn’t, as we both agree as to the analysis.
Assuming that there is no authorization (and we have no information one way or the other on that point), the Sopranos reference is most likely permissible and the use of the Journey song is not. Without doing a shot by shot analysis, it seems that the video only borrows common ideas also used by the Sopranos finale (which itself borrowed bits from, among others, the Godfather). The idea of a razor cut ending instead of an anticipated event (in this, case the announcement of the winning song) is the same; the expression is different.
As for the Journey song, again, bearing in mind that we don’t know if permission was granted, we can’t think of a reason why a sync license wouldn’t be required. No fair use factors come reasily to mind as to why this would be a fair use.