Songs In Which The Artist "Name-Drops" Their Earlier Works

Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you

xpost

"So I told you about the Total Eclipse now / but still it caught you unaware / but I'm telling you / hold on, hold on / tomorrow we'll be there"

It's an amazing song. Look it up.

"I'm listening to Mountain To Sound/and the way it's panned is cool"

Coolio ref's "Fantastic Voyage" on the followup, "1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumthin New)."

And Harry Chapin's "Sequel," the, um, sequel to "Taxi."

They Might Be Giants : "Hey, Mr. DJ", "we told you 'bout the world that's a dress".

'Ladies, they pay homage, but haters say Dre fell off
How nigga? My last album was "The Chronic"'

"..where the blood forever rains.."
"..for those who found that hell awaits.."

your daddy's car is waiting to take us to the sea

"under blood red skies" ("Deal With the Devil")
"hellions", "painkiller rises again" ("Demonizer")
"angel - put sad wings around me now" ("Angel")
"time to ram it down" ("Hellrider")
"they remain still as stained class", "guarded by the sentinel" ("Eulogy")

also, the first track is called "Judas Rising"

-- 6335 (633...), March 24th, 2005.

haha i like how he tries to take advantage of people forgetting that first Aftermath album from 96

"All those songs like Crystal Ball, Dismnatled King, you know I loved them all."

Magic.

And I second "Closer To You" - it's my favourite ever Momus song (blush, blush, if he's reading)

"And if that doesn't work, well maybe
You jusy haven't earned it yet baby."

"Love On Your Side" by the Thompson Twins references "In the Name Of Love" musically when Tom sings, "I played you all my favorite records..."

"...Looked at my watch it was 6 in the morning"

the only pavement reference i can think of is mentioning the instrumental "drive by fader" in "texas never whispers".

So Sgt. Pepper took you by suprise

The only thing you did was yesterday

Also, the Kinks, "Paranoia" mentions a few of their old songs.

* Weird coincidence: As I was typing that sentence, the Kinks' "Yes Sir" started playing on Technicolor Web (the ShoutCast station I'm listening to now).

"I sword I'd never lay like a log, bark like a dog
I was a teenage smog, sewn to the sky "

we just wanted to sound like shit
but you thought we were avant garde
you thought we went to art school
but we worked at gas stations

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

you diden't know we were a bunch of assholes
you thought we were liberal and arty
you tried to act wierd and pretend you were violent
when i whipped chairs at you, you can off and cried

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

once you realized we hate people like you
you finally stopped coming to our shows
now there's less faggots, less people with glasses
less know it all eggheads, no more jazz fags

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

King Krule does this a lot. References to "(baby) blue" and the "lizard state" in more than a few of his tunes.

I usually take this as a sign the well is starting to run dry.

Mott The Hoople: "Drivin' Sister" ("...Eight-Track machine playin' "Half Moon Bay"...")

Camper Van Beethoven sampled/quoted themselves a lot - not quite the same phenom but I always liked it. "She Divines Water" has a piece of "Surprise Truck" in the coda. One of the songs on their second album was the vocals from "Ambiguity Song" flown in backwards over new music. "Eye of Fatima Pt 1" quotes "cowboys on acid" from the backing vocals of "Peace and Love". I think there were a few other instances but it's been years since I listened to those Pitch-A-Tent records so I can't remember.

The Hold Steady do this constantly

It was song number three on John's last CD
"I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me"
And it almost killed me

Double-whammy there with the Mountain Goats record

*Mountain Goats reference

Love: "Laughing Stock" ("I keep on singing my song - I just got out my little red...")

Spoon, "They Want My Soul":

"Jonathan Fisk still wants my soul"

I'd say half of the Gaslight Anthem's songs reference the other half.

"When you hear 'Across The Sea'/I hope you will think well of me" - the last song on the last Salem 66 album.

The Ramones' "7-11:" "We went down to the record swap/The kids were dancin' to the Blitzkrieg Bop."

Buddy Holly -- Peggy Sue Got Married

every rap act ever

Felt in C86 favourite "Ballad Of The Band":
"All those songs like Crystal Ball, Dismnatled King, you know I loved them all."

and again in 'Declaration':

I will be the first person in history to die of boredom and I will have as my epitaph the second line of 'Black Ship In The Harbour'

Iggy Pop Dum Dum Boys?

Super Furry Animals - "Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy"

I know the doorman at the Hippo Club
(He's called Paul)
He let us in for free to hear the dub
(He engineered us once on a track called "Don't Be A Fool, Billy")
We drank a double at the upstairs bar
(On Fierce Panda Records)
Then headed downstairs coz it's better by far

Is there an actual song called Elastic Man that Mark E Smith references people coming up to him and asking 'How He Wrote....' or is it all meta?

he's in character there.

Beatles, "Glass Onion" duh

Fifth post in thread.

" i was living in London with the girl from the song before.. " Paul Simon / The Late Great Johnny Ace. presumably he's talking about Kathy his g/f who features in a bunch of his 60s songs.

Leonard Cohen, "you got me singing"

I think Peter Hammill references the VDGG song, "Refugees" in two later songs, but I can't remember what they are at the moment.

Definitely in the Van der Graaf song, "Man-Erg":

"I'm just a man, and killers, angels, all are these,
dictators, saviours, refugees in war and peace"

... not that obvious written down but it is if you hear him sing it (I suppose 'killers' is a reference to the song, "Killer", now I come to think of it)

the beach boys. worst offender is peak mike love "brian's back," though there's also "do it again" (pretty nice), and i think a few others? makes sense for a band whose first nostalgia tour cash-in dates back to the early '70s.

bright eyes did it pretty tastefully, iirc, on the lead single from the people's key. there's a verse where he weaves in the imagery of every bright eyes album cover, chronologically.

weezer do it to disgusting effect on last year's "back to the shack" single, which is imo their single most egregious transgression of all.

anyway yeah, am i right that this is a thing typically done poorly?

oh yeah TI definitely did this shittily at some point or another, i think on "big shit poppin?"

peter hammill's "easy to slip away" is a direct follow-up to "refugees".

stevolende: it's meta, but when kahimi karie mentions "how i wrote elastic girl" in "good morning world" she's referring to an actual song of hers called "elastic girl" (as well as of course to MES).

The Who, two from Quadrophenia: "The Punk and the Godfather" quotes "My Generation," and "Sea and Sand" quotes the High Numbers' "I'm the Face."

doesn't "helpless dancer" end by quoting "the kids are alright"?

Hm, kind of...it segues into the original recording of TKAA, but I didn't think of that bit as part of "Helpless Dancer" necessarily.

The Jefferson Airplane's "The House at Pooneil Corners" sort of counts, but the reference to "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" is limited to the title, I think, and isn't found in the lyrics.

convinced that Talking Heads must have done this but for the life of me i'm not .. sure.

Sloan, in "400 Metres":
"Now you know about the people of the skyyyyyy!"

(c.f. their song "People of the Sky".)

smog in teenage spaceship

blondie's 'dreaming" has the lyrics "fade away, radiate" which refer back to that thing.

Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race might be the winner here, as each song from the single references the other side.

in the song "i just wanna play the music" (1979), tommy james includes the same riff and "ahhhhs" from the tj & the shondells' "candy maker" (1970).

the album with "candy maker," travelin' is great. has real crunchiness about it. can't speak to the later one.

interesting. even as a tommy james superfan, i'd somehow missed this one. will check it

David Lowery's new one has a sweet little tune named I Wrote a Song Called Take the Skinheads Bowling.

Cheap Trick's "How Are You" name checks "I Want You To Want Me" from the previous studio album:

I said I want you
I want you, need you, love you
I want you to want me
(remember?)

"She Gives Me Love" by Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe features lyrical callbacks to no less than five Yes songs. I think Anderson has included similar references in other songs which I can't recall.

Buck-Tick do this all the time, most famously on Limbo from Mona Lisa Overdrive

Lyrics (in Japanese because they're a bit, erm, dirty) where all of the linked bits are references to titles of previous singles or lyrics from previous albums

お前が流す　涙その理由は　忍び寄る終末に　怯え嘆くせいか
お前が流す　赤い血の意味は　生きている証と　罪と罰のせいさ
愛を交わそう　たとえ地獄でも　炎に濡れて　SEX for YOU
壊れちまえばいいのさ　解き放てばいいのさ
お前に触れる　熱い子宮震わす　揺るぎの無い真実よ　メクルメク愛よ
血は滾り　肉踊り狂う　飛び散る蜜は　SIX or NINE
目を閉じていりゃいいのさ　感じていればいいのさ
愛を交わそう　たとえ地獄でも　炎に濡れて　JUST ONE MORE KISS
お前がいればいいのさ　狂っちまえばいいのさ
お前がいればいいのさ　狂っちまえばいいのさ
狂っちまえば…

Lou Reed, intro to "Gimmie Some Good Times"

Lou Reed, "Gimmie Some Good Times"

Hey, if that ain't the rock'n'roll animal himself, what you doing bro?
- Standing on the corner
Well, I can see that, what you got in your hand?
- Suitcase in my hand
No, shit, what's this?
- Jack is in his corset, Jane is in her vest
Fucking faggot junkie
- Jack, sweet Jane, I'm in a rock'n'roll band
Well, I can see that!

It's when artists namedrop their later work that gets me. It's like yoooo you saw through time!

XTC saw through time twice--"orange and lemon" and "nonesuch" both appear in the lyrics of the previous album.

(Yes this is me Buck-Tick-posting twice in a row) but B-T also do this all the time. All of Hisashi's little obsessions end up repeating at larger and larger scale. He was shoehorning the phrase 'Sub Rosa' into his work (musical and otherwise) before it finally turned up as both a song and an album title.