On their 1977 album, Deceptive Bends, English band 10cc had a song called “I Bought a Flat----Guitar Tutor”. In the song, the lyrics mention whatever chord is being played, but not in an obvious way.
The first line of the song (with the chords in parentheses) is
I bought a (A-major) flat (A-flat), diminished (A-flat diminished) responsibility.
There is a wikipedia link that includes the lyrics, and the chords being played
I only know of one other song that does something similar, a song by an obscure British prog-rock band called Egg in which the lyrics reference the time signatures they’re playing. The name of the song is “Seven Is a Jolly Good Time”
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” does something similar in the lines “the fourth, the fifith, the minor chord, the major lift.” I’m not sure there’s a name for this, though.
I agree that self-referential is the best descriptor.
The chorus of Just an Old Fashioned Love Song by Three Dog Night has the line: “Just an old-fashioned love song, Comin’ down in three-part harmony.” which seems to fit the bill.
Should be “minor fall,” not “minor chord” there. Whoops. Yeah, I guess self-referential or self-aware or something like that would do, but that’s more expansive, so if you’re looking for a term specifically meaning a song that references its chords in a punny manner, I highly doubt there’s a formal term for specifically that.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet had some songs named after their time signatures, such as “11-4”. But they didn’t have any lyrics – only the title is the reference.
No list of self-referential songs is complete without the brilliant Title of the Song by Da Vinci’s Notebook; a perfect takedown of every boy band song, ever.
It’s not explicitly mentioned but Genesis’s ABACAB is a description of the sequence of sections in the song they referred to as “A”, “B” or “C”. It’s the name of the song and its mentioned in the lyrics often.
The sequence is actually an earlier version of the song. Had they stayed true to the sequence they would have named the song ACCAABBAAC but apparently singing that word didn’t sound as sexy as singing Abacab.
I’ve seen abacab explained this way before and I don’t get it. Swap C with B and you get ABBAACCAAB which can be construed as abacab. Are you hung up on what letters were being used, like B has to be bridge and C chorus? I always took them as sections in order of appearance.
Yeah, me too. It looks like Mike Rutherford gave this explanation, and it seems what he’s referring to is that the song originally had parts they had labelled “part A,” “part B,” and “part C,” and those parts got jumbled around, at one point being ABABAC, but then ending up ACCAABBAAC. So they’re just sticking with the original names of the various parts. It absolutely can be ABBAACCAAB and how I would analyze it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it go outside alphabetical order when discussing song structure.
Welsh band Super Furry Animals wrote a bunch of songs on their Phantom Power album using guitars with an unconventional D-A-D-D-A-D tuning (the original plan was to do the entire album that way, but they didn’t want to completely box themselves in).
Two of those songs were instrumentals titled “Father Father” 1 & 2. You know, DADDAD.
I’m reminded of an obscure song by the (ex) Cat Heads, Anti-Song. The whole thing is anti-self-referential in that they list everything the song is not or does not have. The line that I always liked:
Of course the mention of the song saying “shit” was in fact the only usage of the word in the lyrics.
“We wrote this song, it’s not too short, not too long
It’s got back-up vocals in just the right places (in just the right places)
It’s got a few oohs and ahhs (oooh aaah)
And it takes a little pause
Just before I sing the anthem”
NOFX, “Please Play This Song on the Radio”
as you can imagine, the lyrics only stay radio-friendly.
“So I picked up my brush
Painted blue guitar
And I ripped off the chords
From Bron-Y-Aur”
Red House Painters, “Another Song for a Blue Guitar”
The lyrics of 4’33" describe what’s going on to a T
I suppose Weird Al’s “This Song’s Just Six Words Long” is pretty self-referential, even though there are more words in the song than just the six named in the title. In fact, the chorus goes
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
