Was Joe Walsh (in Life’s Been Good to me so far) the first musician to talk about how much money he has in a song? If not, who was? It’s extremely common now but it doesn’t seem like a very old trend. I mean, the Beatles never talked about their warehouses full of money, did they?
Well, there was George Harrison’s tax protest, “Taxman.”
I also remember a song from the '30s by Bunny Berigan, “I Can’t Get Started,” where the singer flashes a lot of bling.
The Beatles “Baby You’re A Rich Man” is alleged to be (too strong a word here?) about their manager Brian Epstein.
There’s also “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, which basically chronicles their problems with fame and a fickle press. Not quite the same thing, but close.
But hey, this stuff has been going on forever. Bo Diddley did a lot of referring to himself as a badass in the 50’s. Archie Bell and the Drells “could sing and dance just as good as they walk”.
Self-referential posing isn’t new to Rap. It’s a fairly common tradition in the blues. Chaka Khan was doing it in the 1980’s. Robert Johnson sang “Me and the devil are walkin’ side by side” in the 1920’s.
I think the OP meant more along the lines of singing about all the money and trappings of being a successful or popular entertainer, rather than just boasting or bragging about yourself in songs. Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry may have bragged in songs, but they weren’t singing about their record deals. Frank Sinatra didn’t sing songs about starting his own record company.
Considering how huge an industry rock music became in the late 60s and early 70s (arena tours, “coporate rock”, Peter Frampton, Casablanca Records-style marketing campaigns, etc), we are talking about a different scale of wealth, fame, and glamour.
Ray Davies wrote about being screwed over by the record companies, managers, agents, and music publishers on the Kinks album Lola Vs. Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One. Little glamour there beyond “Top Of The Pops”, even that sounds hollow. Everybody’s In Showbiz covered the illusions and problems of fame.
King Crimson complained of high commission percentages and businessmen with fat cigars on “Lament”.
The Byrds had “So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”, more about fame than money.
Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention had the album titled We’re Only In It For The Money. But the album was more of a skewering of American culture and hippie idealism rather than the rockstar life.
Alice Cooper had the Billion Dollar Babies album and song.
widdershins: To get specific, though (hey, I’m anal retentive, what can I say?) the song Billion Dollar Baby, was actually about either a blow-up doll, or a Barbie fetishist, depending on how ya look at it.
Generation Landslide (on the same album) was more in line with the OP, I think. Though the album title itself does point to just that, according to various things band members have said over the years: They were rich beyond the dreams of avarice, for a while.