I was just listening to the new Dream Theater CD and in one song, The Shattered Fortress*, they break into a short section that is from another of their songs, Repentance, though the lyrics are a bit different. It also breaks into another section for a different song.
Any other examples of bands citing themselves. I know Ozzy does it with I Don’t Know on one of his newer CDs.
Slee
*Gah, I hate that as a name for a song. Not sure why…
The Who do this a lot. Mostly on Tommy and Quadrophenia you have songs with parts of other songs in them. One one of Pete Townshend’s solo albums he has a song that he recorded and then he changed all the words for the version the Who did later.
Certain musical phrases in the Who’s Tommy also came from songs like Rael and A Quick One While He’s Away.
Procol Harum’s song “Pilgrim’s Progress” takes much of its organ part from their “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Later on, Matthew Fisher’s solo song “Going for a Song,” also quotes from “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
“Glass Onion” by the Beatles quotes a few notes from “The Fool on the Hill” (and makes reference to it and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Fixing a Hole,” and “I am the Walrus.”)
The Refreshments quote ‘Down Together’ in one of the songs off their second album.
Queen’s Messenger from the Seven Seas is cited on the Sheer Heart Attack album.
Rush plays a part of Cygnus X-1 (Book I) on the Hemisphere’s album. Though that’s cheating as the two songs sort of form a whole.
I think it happens more often that most people think. Sting did it for a few albums in a row.
Simon and Garfunkle’s Save The Life of My Child has a small snippet of Sound of Silence in it.
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had a hit “Nothin’ but a G Thang.” Later on, Snoop would record “Still a G Thang.”
Being the conclusion of the AA Suite, that entire song is composed of snippets from the first four songs of the series: The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, The Root of All Evil, and Repentance. The arrangements are slightly different, but I recognized every second of the song the first time I heard it.
The 2nd through 4th songs reference earlier songs in the series as well.
The Beatles also sing a snippet of “She Loves You” at the end of “All You Need is Love”.
Dirty Diana, by the late King of Pop, ends with some of the guitar riffs from Thriller.
That’s Seven Seas of Rhye you mean, right?
Robert Plant’s “Tall Cool One” features a snippet a few old Led Zeppelin songs, including “Black Dog.”
Toward the end of the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love,” Paul can be heard singing bits of “She Loves You” and “Yesterday.”
And the Kinks’ “Destroyer” features the riff from “All Day and All of the Night.”
Green Day’s American Idiot album is full of recurring themes, sensibly as it is a concept album. At one point during “Homecoming”, the backup vocals are heard singing “Don’t wanna be an American idiot.”
In the end of Maroon Five’s “This Love”, backup vocals are faintly heard singing “And she will be loved/She will be loved…”
I remember reading an interview with Plant when this was released way back when. he said everyone else was ripping of Led Zepplin, so he should be able to also. That was the same interview where he said,“I’d rather cut Mitch Easter’s lawn than play in a band like Journey.”
As for the topic, Liz Phair has a line in “Rock Me” from her 2003 album Liz Phair “Your record collection don’t exist/
You don’t even know who Liz Phair is”
Sting quotes a snippet of song from the previous album on (I think) every album, from the Police era to his solo career.
Loving you tonight by Squeeze contains the line “my last temptation was misunderstood”, which an obvious callout to Tempted, especially because the song sounds more like Tempted than any other Squeeze song.
We mentioned the Who, but not “The Rock” from Quadrophenia, which quotes from four previous songs on the album, using their themes to create a unified whole. Also, “The Punk Meets the Godfather” quotes from “My Generation.”
Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” has one verse that quotes lyrics from earlier hits by the group.
In “Ashes to Ashes”, Bowie cites “Space Oddity” by singing the line “We know Major Tom’s a junkie”.
George Harrison sings “We all know o-bla-di-bla-da” in “Savoy Truffle”.
(By the way… more stuff about “Tommy”: Has anyone ever noticed that the “Tommy” leitmotif first appeared as the chords played under the final section of “My Generation”, where Townsend sings “talkin’ 'bout my generation” over and over?)
In Rockaria! by the Electric Light Orchestra, there’s the line:
“…and the orchestra were playin’ all Chuck Berry’s greatest tunes…”
Several albums earlier, ELO did a cover of Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven.
Guns and Roses recorded Don’t Cry twice with completely different lyrics (though a shared chorus), but I don’t know if you’d call it citing themselves since both versions were released simultaneously.
(The) Prodigy sample their own songs all the time - Baby’s Got a Temper is basically a reworking of a bunch of drum and synth samples from Firestarter, for example.
Queensryche cited themselves an entire album- they followed up their Operation: Mindcrime concept album 20 years later with another concept album that was a continuation of the same story.
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but in the same spirit: Bowling for Soup’s Punk Rock 101 cites Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On a Prayer as part of a narrative:
On the Beastie Boys’ song “Intergalactic” they sample one of their much older songs, using the bit “…mmmmm, DROP?”
I totally forget the name and album of the older song. I know there are several other BBoys examples, too.
The opening song on the 1973 “Band on the Run” album by Paul McCartney and Wings is a song of the same name. The final song is Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five–it closes by repeating part of the opening song.