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

"Now it's true. It's true, this is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothin'… without your kind. That I see now, after 24 hours of sufferin'… tears, cold sweat… 'Why does my girl always have to be… the one to go south and go away from me...' and leave me stringin' on a tree… dinglin' on a string, that's alright… I'm gon' be there when you come back… but I'm gonna give you this little old rap, so you can get this together."

I have a feeling that JB probably name-checks himself during intimate conversations in real life.

"Now it's true. It's true, this is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothin'… without your kind. That I see now, after 24 hours of sufferin'… tears, cold sweat… 'Why does my girl always have to be… the one to go south and go away from me...' and leave me stringin' on a tree… dinglin' on a string, that's alright… I'm gon' be there when you come back… but I'm gonna give you this little old rap, so you can get this together."

Yess, brianiac--that is one of my fave JB moments. What a weird thing to put on a Christmas album, and I love the "socially conscious" album cover. I love the way he ends it..."that's all right...just take your time." Quietly murderous and insane.

"Now it's true. It's true, this is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothin'… without your kind. That I see now, after 24 hours of sufferin'… tears, cold sweat… 'Why does my girl always have to be… the one to go south and go away from me...' and leave me stringin' on a tree… dinglin' on a string, that's alright… I'm gon' be there when you come back… but I'm gonna give you this little old rap, so you can get this together."

Yess, brianiac--that is one of my fave JB moments. What a weird thing to put on a Christmas album, and I love the "socially conscious" album cover. I love the way he ends it..."that's all right...just take your time." Quietly murderous and insane.

Can't remember which Xmas song he does this on, but I references this film he appeared in, "Ski Party," on one of 'em. The JB free-association method at work.

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.