SONGS WHERE/SONGS THAT/SONGS WITH/SONGS IN WHICH

King of America - lyric but not song title (and it's on a different album)

isn't the lyric from "brilliant mistake"? which is the opening track from King of America?

Yes, you are right, sorry.

Songs in which the singer acknowledges there may be a shortcoming in his lyrics:

Beatles - only a northern song
Black Sabbath - the writ

There is a Mansun song which is entirely on this topic, it is not a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y10Jk58zFa0

Sparks - The Number One Song in Heaven ("Lyrically weak, but the music's the thing")

Max Tundra - Labial ("I only sing about things that happen to me / I never learned how to fill my songs with allegory")

TMBG, "Number Three"

Alice Cooper - "School's Out" ("We can't even think of a word that rhymes")

Tower to the skies, an academy of lies
And what goes up surely must come down
And we felt the mighty blowout with the walls coming down
Or something like that

Taupin/John “Your Song” seems like the apotheosis of this

Orange Juice:
"Nothing worth finding is easily found,
Try as we might,
That was supposed to sound very profound,
It probably sounds trite."

Natasha Bedingfield - These Words

(basically boils down to, "sometimes even my deepest, cleverest lyrics are no match for the heartfelt directness of a simple 'I love you' (but don't get me wrong, I have entire notebooks full of deep lyrics)"

Our New Song by The Wonder Stuff

Songs in which the singer acknowledges there may be a shortcoming in the previous writer's lyrics:

Herman's Hermits' cover of I'm 'enery the Eighth, I Am

Billy Joel - If I Only Had the Words is sort of a song about this topic, kinda like Your Song.

Neil Young Ambulance Blues isn't it exactly but "It's hard to say the meaning of this song" is in the same genre

I don't agree with the OP and I'm perfectly fine with ILM being the TVTropes of music as one of its roles.

Songs that get all meta and mention 'this song' in the lyrics

Xp

Angie Aaron, "Spaceship" says "this is just a song to pay the rent."

Angie Aparo

Prince: "I was dreaming when I wrote this"

Spin Doctors: "I hope you heard this song and it passed you off"

This seems like a pretty common trope

Klymaxx, "I miss you / there's no other way to say that rhymed."

Weezer - In the Garage

Songs about sweat dripping down balls

tlc - waterfalls

Perhaps "Panama":

Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight
I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off
Know what I'm sayin'
Uhh, I reach down between my legs n' ease the seat back

Don't go chaffing waterballs
Please stick to the thighs and the boxers that you're used to
I know that you're gonna scratch it your way or nothing at all
But I think you're moving too fast

Little-known fact: in an early draft of "Night and Day," Cole Porter originally wrote

Like the drip drip drip of the sweat-drops
Between the choad and the taint
So a voice inside me whispers...
Night and day
You are the one

Frank Ocean "Nikes"

songs where a woman corresponds with her husband under an assumed identity and arranges a liaison with him as a test of his marital fidelity:

Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
Kate Bush - Babooshka

― how to diss a peer completely (unregistered)

Haha, I didn't know someone posted this a year before I polled these two songs.

to my shame, it appears that the Steve Hoffman forum beat me to it by about eight years:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/kate-bushs-babooshka-vs-rupert-holmes-escape.211500/

Songs that contain lyrics with “sorrow” being rhymed and resolved by “tomorrow”

Black Sabbath - megalomania

John Prine, "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" is one, but there are hundreds.

It's up there with "college" / "knowledge."

A bit behind "night-time" / "right time" but still in the Overused Rhyme Hall of Shame.

heart / part, life / wife

fire/desire

^oh yeah, that’s the big one

Songs that contain lyrics with “sorrow” being rhymed and resolved by “tomorrow”

From Autumn to Ashes, "Autumn's Monologue"

Steven Wilson, "Happy Returns"

In reverse (tomorrow/sorrow): Nilsson, 'Without You'

"What I Did for Love" from A Chorus Line

kid cudi - “pursuit of happiness”

Springsteen, "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" and "Take 'em As They Come" (same lyric, repurposed)

doot doot doo lookin' out my back door

The Colour Field -“Thinking of You”

I'm sure there is at least one thread for this but it's hard to search: is the 'I love you, I need you' and variants thereof the most used and abused couplet in music? (Prompted by listening to All Because of You by Leroy Hutson.)

Songs that alternate between 3/3 and 4/4:
Van Morristown- Celtic ray

Songs that mention getting high followed by some instrumental flourish or emphasis :

Allman bros- Ain’t wastin time no more

And I learned to play some lead guitar
I was under age in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a j (INSTRUMENTAL FLOURISH)
And when I come back to the room
And everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play (INSTRUMENTAL FLOURISH)
And it was late in the evening
And I blew that room away

(INSTRUMENTAL FLOURISH)

songs where you can't find what you're looking for

"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2

― hoooyaaargh it's me satan (voodoo chili), Monday, February 12, 2018 2:34 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Let's add

"Where is my mind?" Pixies
"Where's my jumper" Sultans of ping fc

Similar to a track we were on above—songs where the title almost, but not quite, matches the lyric:

Bob Dylan - Gotta Serve Somebody (the lyric is “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”)

Oh, sorry, we actually did do this—

songs where the "titular phrase" is slightly different from the title of the song:

L'Trimm - Cars With the Boom ("we like the cars, the cars that go boom")