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

Syd Barrett Here I Go
She don't rock 'n' roll, she don't like it
She don't do the stroll, well she don't do it right
Well, everything's wrong and my patience was gone
When I woke one morning
And remembered this song
O-oh-oh, kinda catchy, I hoped
That she would talk to me now
And even allow me to hold her hand
And forget that old band.

So now I've got all I need
She and I are in love, we've agreed
She likes this song and my others too
So now you see my world is...
'Cause of this tune!
What a boon this tune!
I tell you soon
We'll be lying in bed, happily wed,
And I won't think of that girl
Or what she said...

Thee Headcoats - Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot

Suicide - Be Bop Kid

This song's about life

"Muzzle" - Smashing Pumpkins

"have you ever heard the words i'm singing in these songs?
it's for the girl i've loved all along
can a taste of love be so wrong?"

She and I are in love, we've agreed

lol the note he hits on "we've agreed" is one of the most bleakly funny things in pop music

"Flesh Canoe" - Animal Collective

"Cause what this song's about is me singing
I'm just wondering what to do with you myself and me
Naked in the mirror of the bathroom"

The original (2011) version of Car Seat Headrest's "Nervous Young Inhumans" ends with this monologue:

Earlier in the song I used the term "galvanistic," and galvanism is the concept, uh, the obsolete scientific theory that there is a kind of electricity flowing through our bloodstreams, and that was our life force. I used the term because I came across it in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", and that book is sort of an exploration of the theme of creating a character or making up a person. So I used the term "galvanistic" to allude to that book as a sort of symbol of how I, like, created you as a character, by pretending that I know a lot more about you than I actually do, and also to refer to the fact that I've fall—fallen in love with the characters you've created in, uh, your body of work. This is the part of the song where I start to regret writing it...

Microdisney - Bullwhip Road

I hate the world
I hate my life and this song
Now run along

Super Furry Animals - Gateway Song
Super Furry Animals - Runaway

Odd choice to put two songs that open with the line "this song" back to back on an album.

Moodymann- Freekie Motherfucker

You don't even like this song / you just dig the hook

Spin Doctors, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" ("I hope them cigarettes are gonna make you cough / I hope you hear this song and it pissed you off")

I bet she was pissed off. We all were.

This one's not "this song," but even more meta -- the final lines of "Terrible Things," the last song on Beauty Pill's The Unsustainable Lifestyle:

Terrible things, terrible things, they are gonna happen
This record's over, so why not go outside and stop them?

along the same line, the end of "The All Golden" by Van Dyke Parks, the final song on side A of Song Cycle:

"Might as well allow for one more go round
That's all folks!
Them hayseeds go back to
the country..."

Wire's Map Ref. 41°N 93°W where he semi-sarcastically says "Chorus!" just before the chorus.

obvious example: Donny Hathaway - A Song For You

Wire's Map Ref. 41°N 93°W where he semi-sarcastically says "Chorus!" just before the chorus.

If this counts, then a bunch of "Take it to the bridge..." instances to thread.

She and I are in love, we've agreed
lol the note he hits on "we've agreed" is one of the most bleakly funny things in pop music

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, March 12, 2018 12:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! was listening to this song on the train this morning and i chuckled out loud at this line.

stupid mistake by the electric soft parade has the lines

I could be loving you now
I could be doing it with my eyes closed
You could be back on your feet
But that isn't how the song goes

and i have wondered whether that last line is extremely meta or is referring to another (metaphorical or specific?) song and so not meta at all. i like the former interpretation more anyhow.

Denim, "Internet Curtains"

We ain't been going very long
We've only written one good song
And here it is we will play
The best song that we've got it's called
Internet curtains

I know the intro's far too long
And the middle bit's all wrong
But even so it's still our song
So when the chorus comes please sing along
Internet curtains

And now we've got ourselves a hit
Because Chris Evans played it
Everyday on his show
I owe it all to a song called
Internet curtains

Justin Timberlake "Rock Your Body"
"Bet I'll have you naked by the end of this song"; Cue wardrobe malfunction

our song
it gives us a reason
our song
that good remedy
music has magic
that stuff of syncopation

I'm Too Sexy for this Thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88TgFOeON3k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPW6a-vjsbc

Manic Street Preachers - S.Y.M.M. (not their finest moment IMO...)

"I never ever wanted to write this song" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1D1NYVyuM

Violent Femmes - Prove My Love

'third verse, same as the first'

Built To Spill - 'Joyride'

This part of the song is called the second verse
Sounds just like the first but with different words
It only has three chords and they are A and E and D
They are A and E and D
Then it goes to D minor, D, uh, A, E, D

Sorry to share this:

https://youtu.be/YqnxDJk08vw

Lyrics here: http://www.madmusic.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=1514

Bruce Springsteen: Bobby Jean

Or some motel room, there'll be a radio playing
And you'll hear me sing this song

Great one

The Postal Service - Such Great Heights

And when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home.

Always loved this bit of self-awareness in These Immortal Souls' "So the Story Goes":

Everybody knows I've only got one song
And it's much too slow
And it's much too long
And this is how it goes

Ariana Grande's "Piano" doesn't say "this song," but the lyrics are largely about the song itself:

I could write a song with my new piano
I could sing about how love is a losing battle
Not hard, it's not hard

And I could sing about cupid and his shooting arrow
In the end, you'll find out that my heart was battered
Real hard, it's so hard

But I'd rather make a song they can play on the radio
That makes you wanna dance, don't it make you wanna dance?
But I'd rather make a song they can play on the radio
That makes you wanna grab your lover's hand

...And to get even more "meta" (and let my Arianator flag fly), I'd postulate that a song falling a few tracks later on the album -- "Almost Is Never Enough" (feat. Nathan Sykes) -- is to be taken as an example of the *other* kind of song referenced in "Piano": a slow, piano-based ballad about how love is a losing battle, etc.

Radiohead

This this is our new song
Just like the last one
A total waste of time
My iron lung

Number Three
They Might Be Giants

There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third
Don't know where I got the inspiration or how I wrote the words
Spent my whole life just digging up my music's shallow grave
For the two songs in me and the third one I just made
A rich man once told me
"Hey life's a funny thing"
A poor man once told me
That he can't afford to speak
Now I'm in the middle like a bird without a beak 'cause
There's just two songs in me and I just wrote the third
Don't know where I got the inspiration or how I wrote the words
Spent my whole life just digging up my music's shallow grave
For the two songs in me and the third one I just made
So I went to the President
And I asked old what's-his-name
Has he ever gotten writer's block
Or something like the same
He just started talking
Like he was on TV
"If there's just two songs in ya, boy
Whaddaya want from me?"
So I bought myself some denim pants
And a silver guitar
But I politely told the ladies
"You'll still have to call me Sir
Because I have to keep my self-respect
I'll never be a star
Since there's just two songs in me
And this is Number Three"

https://youtu.be/UVXZBA6tJPA

just went through Nilsson Schmilsson, which has several songs about singing songs or recording songs but i dont think anyone of them actually say "this song" at any point

37 posts and no mention of the archetypal “this song”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwxXIPEW8aA

Elton John - This Song Has No Title

This is the song that doesn't end
Yes it goes on and on my friend.
Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was
and they'll continue singing it forever just because (repeat)

(from the 90s reboot of Lamb Chop - Shari Lewis, not the band)

Modest Mouse - Beach Side Property: "A message left on the forehead of God / Sent sealed and signed by the saints who sang / this song, this song .../ This song: / 'We're going union like they say...' "

-PiL, This is not a love song
-Neil, This Note's For You (immortalizing Spuds MacKenzie). i think Neil wins the meta award for enjoying doing this in his songs the most
-Fall, Mother-Sister: "What's this song about? -Er, nothing." Of course Mark gets meta a lot, e.g. NWRA where he complains about an imaginary cover of English Scheme as a love song with a grand piano, but i can't think of another song that references itself, exactly.

> Violent Femmes - Prove My Love

This is an slightly inferior copy of Ramones - Judy is a Punk, '2nd verse same as the first'

A cursory search turns up dozens and dozens of songs i don't know with "this song" as the full or partial title, including examples from George Harrison (terrible song), Isley Bros, Kid Cudi/Mary J Blige, Weird Al (Don't Download This Song), Backstreet Boys (Hey Mr DJ Keep Playin' This Song - pretty sure I have heard this), Grizzly Bear (I certainly have heard this but don't remember it), Monica, Meat Puppets, Fall Out Boy, System of a Down, Merle Haggard, NoFX, Black Crowes, Willie Nelson, etc.

Pay TV - “Refrain Refrain”:

“Refrain refrain refrain refrain
And we’re repeating it again again and again”

'Suffice To Say' by the Yachts is at, or near, the very top of this pile as far as I'm concerned.

The Damned - Love Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc0och2Q_zg

Sparks - When I'm With You

It's the break in the song
When I should say something special
But the pressure is on and I can't make up nothing special
Not when I'm with you

XTC - Mayor of Simpleton

"Well I don't know how to write a big hit song"

(note: "Mayor" was XTC's biggest hit in the U.S.!)

I agree that it's meta but I would question its inclusion in the "this song" tropespace.

Also I'm rethinking "Deacon Blues" rn. Basically because I was watching the "Classic Albums" documentary about Aja and it is posited that the speaker of the lyrics is a dreamy wannabe, and not an actual musician.

In that reading, the "this song" in the lyric "I cried when I wrote this song" is not Fagen literally saying that he cried when he wrote "Deacon Blues," even tongue-in-cheek. He has, rather, constructed a character whose fantasy is of being a super-hip saxophone player who takes one last drag as he approaches the bandstand, then presumes to blow that room away (rather like Paul Simon's character in "Late in the Evening").

The "this song" in that line is the impossibly sophisticated jazz number that the speaker of the song unleashes... in his fantasy of being a gifted musician. In reality he lives in his mom's basement and works at Radio Shack.

...or so that reading of "DB" would indicate. Not necessarily coming down 100% for that interpretation but I find it intriguing.

Anyway "Mayor of Simpleton" is again sung from the viewpoint of a created character not synonymous with Partridge (who clearly can).

Some time ago I saw a play called "What I Did Last Summer," with an adolescent protagonist coming of age and trying out different ways of being; the last line of the play is "and so I wrote this play." Now THAT is a "this song."

Sparks - When I'm With You

― mizzell

"this is the number one song in heaven"!

Monty Python:

I bet you they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they won't play this new (bleep) song
It's not that it's (buzzer) or (horn) controversial
Just that (bell)-ing words are awfully strong

You can't say (klaxon) on the radio
Or (whip crack), or (arrow thud), or (croak)
You can't even say I'd like to (güiro) you someday
Unless you're a doctor with a really large (doing)

So I bet you they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they don't (record rewind)-ing well program it
I bet you those (kiosk chime)-ing old program directors
Will think it's a load of horse (fart)

mother do you think they'll like this song?

Elton John welcomes you to his Christmas song, Step Into Christmas, in its first line.

GusGus goes extra meta in "Add This Song"

Add this song to your list
Play it til it no more exist

Through the pain of the snow
Is there nowhere to go
Like I'm stuck in the state
Of no state at all

As I wandered alone in the darkest night
Heard this song at the rave
And it saved my life

(i did add it to my list)

Back to the opening post, "It's hard to say the meaning of this song" in Ambulance Blues is the thesis statement for the entire On the Beach album!

Edward Bear, “Last Song”

It's the last song I'll ever write for you
It's the last time that I'll tell you
Just how much I really care
This is the last song I'll ever sing for you
You'll come looking for the light
And it won't be there
But I love you
Oh yes I do
Yes I do

Also on this similar thread: songs that are about themselves

John Prine, "Leave the Lights On"

This is just a long song, it ain't no poem
Leave the lights on till your baby gets home

Brinsley Schwarz, “Love Song”

This here is a love song
I gotta get back to my baby's heart again
This here is a love song
And I'm gonna sing it till I get back home

Which is also mentioned on this similar thread: Songs that are aware of themselves

Barenaked Ladies, "What A Good Boy"

I couldn't tell you
I was wrong
Chickened out grabbed a pen and a paper
Sat down and I wrote this song

Tom Waits, "Hold On"

Down by the Riverside motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Oh, your old hometown's so far away
But inside your head there's a record that's playing
A song called "Hold On"