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

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)

The Mountain Goats - "Cotton"

"Fire and Rain" y'all!

Just yesterday mornin', they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to

This is sort of related to the The Monty Python song:

Public Enemy - Bring the Noise

Radio stations I question their blackness
They call themselves black, but we'll see if they'll play this

even more specific: songs where the singer says what "this song's about"

The Yummy Fur - Roxy Girls "it's part 2 of Roxy Girls, where social commentary has all but dissolved" / "and this songs has not point at all"

Yes! And Father Ubu Says-- "Mark Gibbons and me fucking hate this song"

it's unclear, when robert pollard sings "i wrote a song once about her called 'the brides have hit glass'" in guided by voices' "the brides have hit glass," whether he's talking about *this* song called "the brides have hit glass" or some other song called "the brides have hit glass." the past tense construction suggests the latter. the fact that there's no record of a pre-existing gbv song with that title suggests the former. the fact that robert pollard by that point had probably written 2,642,791 songs that no one had ever heard suggests maybe the former after all. so maybe that one, but also maybe not that one.

oops, penultimate sentence should say "...maybe the latter after all." obviously.

This is a weeping song
A song in which to weep
While all the men and women sleep
This is a weeping song
But I won’t be weeping long

Eazy, good catch on Fire & Rain

it's unclear, when robert pollard sings "i wrote a song once about her called 'the brides have hit glass'" in guided by voices' "the brides have hit glass," whether he's talking about *this* song called "the brides have hit glass" or some other song called "the brides have hit glass." the past tense construction suggests the latter. the fact that there's no record of a pre-existing gbv song with that title suggests the former. the fact that robert pollard by that point had probably written 2,642,791 songs that no one had ever heard suggests maybe the former after all. so maybe that one, but also maybe not that one.

belle & sebastian "judy and the dream of horses" makes the same move, except that the singer/writer of the song "judy and the dream of horses" implores the title character judy, in the lyrics of the song called "judy and the dream of horses," to write a song called "judy and the dream of horses"

Also, on "Get me away from here, I'm dying" he sings "I could only make you cry with these words."

There's one on the new Camp Cope, 'The Omen'

So I wrote you this song
It probably isn't as good as all the other sad ones

Everclear:

This is a song about Susan
This is a song about the girl next door
This is a song about the everyday occurrences that make me feel like letting go
Yes I think we got a problem
So much for the afterglow

This is a song about Susan
This is a song about the way things are
This is a song about the scary things you see from the corner of your eye
Don't you wonder, why we never talk about the future
We never talk about the future
We never talk about the past anymore
We never ask ourselves the questions to the answers that nobody even wants to know
Guess the honeymoon is over; so much for the afterglow

also makes me think of this groaner from Pearl Jam:

Come to send, not condescend
Transcendental consequences
To transcend where we are
Who are we? Who we are
Trampled moss, on your souls
Changes all, you're a part
Seen it all, not at all
Can't defend the command

Take me a for a ride
Before we leave

Circumstance, clappin' hands
A driving wind's happenstance
Off the track, in the mud
That's the moss, in the aforementioned verse

Go-Betweens:

"Feel so sure about our love
I'll write a song about us breaking up"

lauryn hill "everything is everything"

i wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth

Now this is a song all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down

Van Morrison, "Wavelength"

This is a song about your wavelength
And my wavelength, baby

...and if that works then maybe we should look at folk songs that begin like "gather round and I will tell you of..."

Tom Lehrer: "Gather round while I sing you of Wernher Von Braun..."

Trad: "Oh have you heard tell of sweet Betsy from Pike..."

Beverly Hillbillies theme: "Tell you a little story bout a man named Jed..."

but getting back to the meta asides rather than the "o muse, help me sing of the tale of..." intro (lol xpost), i myself was once guilty of this in the concluding track of the first and only completed Doctor Casino album (written when i was idk 23 or 24 fwiw):

So the wind will sing in my ear like a bottle
If I tilt my head just so
And ease back on the throttle
Got music and groceries;
I'm open to belong
And nothing that I've given is gone
But if there's nothing wrong,
is there still need for singing these songs?
I'm a bicycle, I dodge obstacles, yeah yeah

This is such a stupid lazy songwriting trope.

Tell that to Bruce Fuckin' Springsteen!

Matching Mole's 'Signed Curtain' is the ultimate example of this of course.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, March 5, 2018 10:39 AM (one week ago) Bookmark

otm. on an album of beautiful songs this is one of the stand outs. it is very stream of consciousness.

There's also "O Caroline" on the same album.

"David's on piano, and I may play on a drum
And we'll try to make the music work, we'll try to have some fun"

Robert Wyatt had been doing it since Soft Machine, "Moon In June":

"Just before we go on to the next part of our song
Let's all make sure we've got the time"

The BBC session version even more so

Paul McCartney gets close in "Here Today" ("you were here today, for you were in my song"). Billy Joel MUST have done this but all I can think of besides "a song" in "Piano Man" (a stretch) is "Famous Last Words," which does everything but say "song."