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

SOME PEOPLE ARE AFRAID ILM IS TURNING INTO THE TVTROPES OF MUSIC, SO HERE'S A CATCH-ALL THREAD WHERE WE CAN DOCUMENT THE THEMATIC/SONIC/COMPOSITIONAL LINKAGES BETWEEN SONGS WITHOUT HAVING TO START A NEW THREAD FOR EACH AND EVERY TROPE THAT POPS INTO OUR HEADS DURING MOMENTS OF DESPERATE BOREDOM

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

"some people"

Songs that are not John Cage's 4' 33"

Songs in which Instrumentation is or is not used

Songs in which the vocalist audibly takes a drag on a cigarette between verses:

Sandy Denny - "No End"

this would be a good thread to collect all of the disparate 'songs where' threads, cause i can never find any of them.

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89RsKaEO7I

songs written by a non-famous family member of the recording artist:

Grizzly Bear - Marla
Throwing Muses - Sinkhole

Songs by 90's-era American indie bands about 80's-era British female singers:

Unrest - "Cath Carroll"
June & the Exit Wounds - "Cathy Dennis"

Songs by 90's-era American indie bands about 80's-era British female singers

Black Tambourine - Throw Aggi Off the Bridge

(about Aggie and Stephen Pastel)

the plot thickens!

songs where the narrator is so miserable that even the sight of children playing fails to cheer his burdened heart:

Rolling Stones - As Tears Go By
Pearl Jam - Black
Screaming Trees - Winter Song

Lol

young girl: hahaha wheeee I love playing in the puddles
Mark Lanegan, grunger: HOW CAN YOU BE SO CAREFREE WHEN MY SOUL IS LITERALLY DYING 😢😢😢

songs that in off whacking with which trailer

lol i have been bumping a lot of these

songs where the narrator is so miserable that even the sight of children playing fails to cheer his burdened heart

How could you leave off The Chi-lites, Have You Seen Her

and Chicago, Make Me Smile

Songs in which, it is not I who is mad, it's you normals!

Elton John - Madman Across the Water
Bonzo Dog Band - My Pink Half of the Drainpipe
Supertramp - Asylum

Songs where the singer is bored of music:

Cat Power - Colors and the Kids

songs where a singer expresses disdain for being put on a pedestal as artist

ionnalee- samaritan

songs where a singer expresses disdain for being put on a pedestal as artist

London Calling
Don't Look Back in Anger

?

much better to have a catch-all thread, good job

songs where a singer expresses disdain for being put on a pedestal as artist

Eminem - Marshall Mathers

songs where a singer expresses disdain for being put on a pedestal as artist

Ani DiFranco - Little Plastic Castle

People talk about my image
Like i come in two dimensions
Like lipstick is a sign of my decling mind
Like what i happen to be wearing
The day that someone takes a picture
Is my new statement for all womankind

And i wish they could see us now
In leather bras and rubber shorts
Like some ridiculous new team uniform
For some ridiculous new sport
Quick someone call the girl police
And file a report

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

"Where Is My Mind"

songs where a singer expresses disdain for being put on a pedestal as artist

Neil Young - On The Beach

^ arguable, but i think he touches on the need for an audience and how frustrating that is - possibly more ambivalent??

songs where the strength of the protagonist's relationship is evaluated based upon their awareness of their lover's potato preferences:

Gershwin - Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
Sia - Sweet Potatoes

Songs in which the Beatles wish you a Happy Birthday

Songs in which the singer reads off a phone number:

“867-5309/Jenny” — Tommy Tutone
“Group Sex” — Circle Jerks
“The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry” — Fiery Furnaces

^Brenda Lee - Bigelow 6-200

Transylvania 6-5000

Oh snap!

Songs in which the boys are back in town:

Thin Lizzy - The Boys are Back in Town

roxy music - remake/remodel ... "CPL 593H!"

scraping foetus off the wheel - DI-1-9026

isaac hayes - good love ... "call good love 69-9-69"

squeeze - "853-5937"

are there any phone-number songs yet that have modern 8, 10, or 11 digit numbers?

City Boy – 5705

roxy music - remake/remodel ... "CPL 593H!"

Not a phone number, it was the registration number of Bryan Ferry's car.

songs written by a non-famous family member of the recording artist:

Grizzly Bear - Marla
Throwing Muses - Sinkhole

― how to diss a peer completely (unregistered), Monday, 12 February 2018 02:46 (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lyn Paul - The Waiting Game (Doreen Belcher)

I know. I do.

"Maybe Baby" had some lines written by Buddy Holly's mom.

George Harrison's "Piggies" had one line he couldn't fill, needed to rhyme with "lacking". His mum suggested "What they need's a damn good whacking" which is the "WHOA" line in the song.

Songs where the singer is bored of music:

Isn’t this every Cat Power song?

POLL: Songs Written By The Artist's Mom

Harry Nilsson, "Little Cowboy"
Harry Nilsson, "Marchin' Down Broadway"

are there any phone-number songs yet that have modern 8, 10, or 11 digit numbers?

Jeremih - 773 LOVE

This doesn't count but Hoyt Axton's mom wrote "Heartbreak Hotel."

songs that are titled wrong on spotify

julian cope - know (cut my friend down) - cut my friends down
pearl jam - aye davanita - aya davanita

This also happened to be the JL album that I most loved

📹

Songs with long names that still aren't the actual lyric

Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
U2 - Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of
The Smiths - There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
Meat Loaf - I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)

_"Album covers what display only a single bandmember?"

Tindersticks have a couple of these.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91QerPGmBLL._UF350,350_QL50_.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b5/Tindersticks-CanOurLove.jpg/220px-Tindersticks-CanOurLove.jpg

Doug Yule is the only person pictured on Velvet Underground Loaded.

Vocoder-y treated almost a cappella-y interlude tracks

Paul McCartney - Be What You See (Link)
Aerosmith - Prelude to Joanie
Pink Floyd - A New Machine (Parts 1 and 2)
Todd Rundgren - Born to Synthesize (okay it's quite long)
The Chemical Brothers - No Path to Follow (okay it's track 1) (and we've long since moved past vocoders)

King Crimson - "The Power to Believe I: A Cappella" (also track 1)

The Apples in Stereo have a few of these, not least the 14 second track "Vocoder Ba Ba" from New Magnetic Wonder

“Aerosmith- Prelude to Joanie”

I’m reading Steven Tyler’s autobiography right now. He talks about making that track and he seems really proud of himself for using a vocoder.

Hits with concealed, uncensored F words

The Kingsmen - Louie Louie
The Beatles - Hey Jude
EMF - Unbelievable
Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Ferry Corsten - Rock Your Body Rock
Mylo - Drop the Pressure / Mylo vs Miami Sound Machine - Doctor Pressure

Lady Gaga - Poker Face

(Louie Louie is an urban myth surely)

Lynn Easton and Jack Ely had both confirmed it throughout the years. This ofc could still just be playing up to the myth but it does sound like a 'fuck'

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/louie-louie-fuck/

BTW googling Louie Louie fuck got some unintended interesting results

Surprised I couldn't find anything on this thread or another thread on this topic:

Songs where the singer imitates another famous singer (but only for a short segment)

"The Doll House" by Phil Ochs (Bob Dylan)
"Dead Finks Don't Talk" by Eno (Bryan Ferry)

There are bound to be loads of nods to Elvis (and others to Dylan) in this vein.

A Simple Desultory Phillipic, of course.

I've lost my harmonica, Albert."

And Man on the Moon, "Hey baby."

"I Dig Rock 'n Roll Music" by Peter, Paul and Mary (The Mamas and the Papas/Donovan/Beatles).

Golden crown by the clean and buckingham rabbit by silver jews sound the same for the first 1 second

Does it count when jacqueline taieb sings talking bout my g g g generation in 7 heures du matin

Thank you god for making me an angel by the country teasers the singer goes “day in day out” like ian curtis in that one joy division tune

we've definitely had that thread... hmmm

I wasn't thinking of actual quotes from other songs, just singers who briefly imitate other singers.

"All You Need Is Your Feeling" by Kleenex Girl Wonder (Kevin Rowland)
"Charge" by The Divine Comedy (I assume Barry White and Prince are what Neil's going for here)
"Sex with the Devil" by Ann Magnuson (Ethel Merman)
"Hell on Wheels" by The Lemon Twigs (Bob Dylan)

"1976" by Redd Kross (Paul Stanley)

is prince imitating joni on “ballad of dorothy parker” or just singing “help me”?

he def imitates the phone (brrrring)

Novelty folk is rife. Lookit Jemaine Clement's pretty good Bowie steez both on Flight of the Conchords' "Bowie's in Space" as well as "Shiny" from the Moana soundtrack

Parts of songs that remind you of Robert Smith at different points in his singing life

Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out with Him? - "But if looks could kill"
Associates - Club Country - the "someone there..." bits at the end of the choruses
The Darkness - Get Your Hands off My Woman - "I've got no right to lay claim to her frame...", arguably sealing it with the "pos-SES-SION"
The Killers - Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - "I couldn't scream while I {breathy voice}h-eld h-er c-lose{/breathy voice} I SWOOOOORE i'd never LET her GAAA-OOOHH" (over All I Want/A Night Like This hybrid music)
Gorillaz - 5/4 - "She made me kill myself. Come on"

A friend also reckons:
New Order - Sunrise - the first couple lines, helped by the music ofc
Sad Lovers & Giants - Imagination - the chorus

Robert Smith

The Shins - So Says I - all the parts where James Mercer sings at the top of his chest voice

singers who briefly imitate other singers

"Down the Beach" by John Phillips (Louis Armstrong)

Singles that are on the album but are not from the album. No debut LPs allowed, nor re-recordings a la Cat People, nor Yellow Sub/Still Cruisin'-style semi-comp malarkey.

The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (Smiley Smile)
The Beach Boys - Do It Again (20/20)
Madonna - American Pie (Music)
Madonna - Die Another Day (American Life)
Queen and David Bowie - Under Pressure (Hot Space)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Electric Ladyland)
Wet Wet Wet - Love Is All Around (Picture This)
Kate Bush - Sat in Your Lap (subtly remixed for The Dreaming)
Dizzee Rascal ft Calvin Harris & Chrome - Dance wiv Me (Dizzee's Tongue 'n' Cheek / Calvin's Ready for the Weekend)
Girls Aloud - Jump (What Will the Neighbours Say?)
Prince - The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (The Gold Experience)
McFly - All About You (Wonderland)
McFly - Please, Please / Don't Stop Me Now (Motion in the Ocean)
McFly - The Heart Never Lies (radio:ACTIVE, the newspaper version)
Disco Inferno - It's a Kid's World (Technicolour, assuming we can call the EP a single)
Spice Girls - Goodbye (Forever)
The Specials - Rat Race (More Specials, US version)
George Michael - Freeek! / Shoot the Dog (Patience)
Supergrass - Going Out (In It for the Money)
Radiohead - Lucky (as heavily promoted lead track on The Help EP) (OK Computer)
Biffy Clyro - Mountains (Only Revolutions)
Robbie Williams/Kylie Minogue - Kids (Kylie's Light Years; this was officially a single from Robbie's Sing When You're Winning)
The Psychedelic Furs - Pretty in Pink 1986 (some versions of Midnight to Midnight)
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now? (some versions of Meat Is Murder)
New Order - Blue Monday (some versions of Power, Corruption & Lies)
Oasis - Some Might Say arguably doesn't count I think, apparently this was always meant to be the first single from the album they hadn't recorded yet
The Beatles - Can't Buy Me Love (A Hard Day's Night)
Can - Spoon (Ege Bamyasi)
a-ha - The Living Daylights (Stay on These Roads)
The Monkees - Daydream Believer (The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees)
The Beach Boys - Sunflower (single version) (some versions of Sunflower)
Simon & Garfunkel - A Hazy Shade of Winter / At the Zoo / Fakin' It (Bookends)

Thanks my friends for their immediate suggesting of the last five

The reverse of this is e.g. old Beatles album tracks being issued as singles in later decades (even three of the singles from Prefab Sprout's first best-of, and the single from RHCP's concurrent first best-of, are old album tracks). That list is just not as interesting imo.

Cottonfields* should be penultimate example there btw

Queen - One Vision (A Kind of Magic)

The Pretenders - Back on the Chain Gang (Learning to Crawl)

Aaliyah - Try Again (some versions of Aaliyah)
Janet Jackson - Doesn't Really Matter (All for You)
Limp Bizkit - Take a Look Around (Chocolate Starfish)
Love - 7 and 7 Is (Da Capo)

Pulp - Help The Aged

Focus - House of the King (Focus 3)

Where chronologically do you draw the line between "first single" and "single that predates the album"?

The Kinks - Days (The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (12 track version))

The Mamas & the Papas - Twelve Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)…. (The Papas and the Mamas)

xps I guess it's up to you where a song starts to distinctly seem like it's been added to the album, or in some cases like the album's tacked on around the single - and if the song doesn't originate from the album sessions itself then that's a (separate but usually overlapping) indicator in itself.

For instance something like You Could Be Mine on UYI II, I wouldn't count that, it's almost irrelevant that the single was tied to T2 rather than the album (following two months later). I wouldn't include those various Pet Shop Boys ones either (Can You Forgive Her, Before).

And singles from Loveless (if Soon/THKW count as singles) and Screamadelica predate the album but they're so connected to those albums (and in the case of Loveless, that was already being worked on before Soon appeared) that there isn't the slight contextual dissonance of a song from another project being glued on. Arguably Sat in Your Lap is one of these but I included it anyway.

What do I count? Here's another:
Gilbert O'Sullivan - Get Down (I'm a Writer, Not a Fighter)

I think mostly it's just, 'were those singles part of the album campaigns?', and I was thinking of ones that I don't think were

Frank Sinatra & Nancy Sinatra - Somethin’ Stupid (The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra)

I guess Bob Dylan - Rainy Day Women #12 and #35 because it came out three months before Blonde on Blonde, but this is where that distinction gets a little hard to make

And The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset appeared four months before the album Something Else so where does that fall

I'd ignore em personally.

The Special AKA - War Crimes and Racist Friend (In the Studio) (this album definitely blurs the lines because, like Loveless, it was being worked as an album for quite a long time, but these still seem detached enough in time as singles unlike Nelson Mandela)

Nas - Halftime (Illmatic)
Warren G - Regulate (Regulate... the G Funk Era)

Actually loads of 90s soundtrack hiphop singles.

thundercat’s “them changes”

Another Beach Boys example decades before 'Still Cruisin' was their 1963 album Little Deuce Coupe which reused four songs (including the title track) from earlier albums because they fit the automotive theme, and because the Boys couldn't possibly come up with enough new material to satisfy their record company's three-albums-a-year schedule.

There must be a bunch of these that were originally written for (or at least first used on) a film soundtrack and later stuck on an album, especially if it was a hit. A good example is "Stay" by Lisa Loeb which was first released on the 'Reality Bites' soundtrack, issued as a single, and topped the charts, all before she even had a record contract. She didn't get an album out until more than a year later, and it again included "Stay".

Songs that quote lyrics from "All Shook Up": "Cyprus Avenue" by Van Morrison, "Avant Gardener" by Courtney Barnett. Are there any others?

DJ Kool - Let Me Clear My Throat (Old School Reunion Remix '96)