Snorlax - it’s better than that - he asks the band first, ‘Can I take it to the bridge? Can I? Take it to the bridge!’
A proper musician will need to tell me whether ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen can be included here.
I think he sings, ‘It goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor third, the major lift’ - I’ve assumed those were the notes of the melody, but I’ve never checked.
The Pixies - “Subbacultcha”: “There’s something about this song…” (from the intro)
The Beatles - “Golden Slumbers”: “And I will sing a lullaby”
The Beatles - “Only A Northern Song”: (pretty much the whole lyric, IIRC)
Neil Diamond - “Song Sung Blue”
Those People In The Formation Of A Christmas Tree Shilling For Coke - “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”
Three Dog Night - “An Old-Fashioned Love Song”
Loggins And Messina - “Love Song”
Donny And Marie Osmond - “Sing” (God, I feel so dirty…)
The Minutemen - “#1 Hit Song” (the song is, like the Da Vinci’s Notebook song, almost a “how-to”)
Billy Joel - “Piano Man”
Minor nitpick – the Beatles didn’t write the lyrics to "Golden Slumbers: Thomas Dekker did.
Some additions:
James Taylor, Fire and Rain: “And I wrote down this song”
Jim Croce I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song
Cole Porter, Be Like the Bluebird:
There’s an old Australian bush song
That Melba used to sing.
A song that always cheered me when I was blue.
Even Melba said this Bush song
Was a helluva song to sing
So excuse me whilst I render it to you."
Bonzo Dog Band, Humanoid Boogie, all about the song “Humanoid Boogie,” e.g., “For the Humanoid Boogie’s full of humanoid rock 'n roll.”
The OP doesn’t specify whether the performer had to write the song, just that the song had to be self-referential, which is why I threw a couple of those other more nauseating songs…
And, oh, I so wish I hadn’t…
The first thing I thought of was, “There’s only two songs in me, and this is Number Three.”
There’s a song called “Bad Check” by Mike Knott that starts out,
Wrote a bad check to the government,
Wrote a bad check to my parents,
Wrote a bad check to this cello player,
She didn’t know it at the time cause I’m singing this later
—and then a lovely cello accompaniment starts in…
Good call on George Harrison’s “This Song,” which was sort of a comical rejoinder to the Chiffons, who’d sued him for allegedly stealing “He’s So Fine” and repackaging it as “My Sweet Lord.”
There’s also the Who’s “Getting in Tune”:
“I’m singing this note 'cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing.”
And Neil Young’s “This Note’s For You.”:
“Ain’t singing for Pepsi, ain’t singing for Coke.
Ain’t’singing for no one that makes me look like a joke.”
how about pavement’s “gold soundz?”
“Go back to those gold soundz,
And keep my anthem to yourself
Because it’s nothing that I don’t like,
Is it a crisis or a boring change?
When it’s central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low-life opinions,
And they’re coming to the chorus now”
“unseen power of the picket fence” is sort of a song about another band, which may not apply, but is interesting nonetheless.
"Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is REM,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
R - E - M
Flashback to 1983,
Chronic Town was their first EP
Later on came Reckoning
Finster’s art, and titles to match:
South Central Rain, Don’t Go Back To Rockville,
Harbourcoat, Pretty Persuasion,
You were born to be a camera,
Time After Time was my least favourite song,
Time After Time was my least favourite song. "
This is not meant to endorse the song in any way, but for the sake of completeness, I think Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” should be mentioned – even if it only references* other *songs, not particularly itself.
[Scrubbing brain and ears…]
Oh wait, thank the lord, I can also mention The Clash’s “Stay Free” (The song is about what you and I used to do… ends with “and if you’re somewhere in the crowd tonight, have a drink on me.”)
Actually, that song’s about the character trying to write another song. Which is funny, because “One Song Glory” is much better than the song he ends up writing.
What about “I’m Too Sexy”? And “Your Song”? Or did someone else already mention those (I don’t think I saw them)?
Toy Dolls: A Far Out Disc has a commercial made by the band on it. Maybe it doesn’t count but it’s actually a track on the album and the band plays the background music.
I’d like to add “Fire at Midnight” from Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull:
Honorable mention to Songs From the Wood:
. . .
‘These Words Are My Own’ by Natasha Bedingfield is more or less all self-referential. It is all about the singer herself trying to write a hit song for her loved one, but not being able to. “I know I had some studio time booked / but I couldn’t find the killer hook” and so on. Rather ultra-ironic, given that the song does have a pretty good hook, as pop chart fodder goes, and was a huge no. 1 hit here (UK) over the summer.
“I’m Wrong About Everything” by John Wesley Harding: “And when you hear this song you’re going to sing along.”
“I Predict” by Sparks: “And this song will fade out, this song will fade out, I predict.” After which it ends cold.
“You’re the Top” by Cole Porter: “If this ditty ain’t too pretty, at least it will tell you how great you are.”
<david allen coe>
</david allen coe>
I love that song.
It goes like this: the fourth (on the IV chord), the fifth (on the V chord)
the minor fall (the minor VI) and the major lift (major IV)
Music theory, religious symbolism, romantic heartbreak and defiance of the perversity of the universe–all wrapped up in one brilliant package…one of the best songs ever written.
“A proper musician” I may not be, but I know a chord when I see one.
NOFX’s “Pump up the Valuum” CD starts off with a little song with the lyrics “Hello, welcome to our CD. Can you hear the blatant similarity to Linoleum and Shadows of Defeat?” Linoleum is another of their songs, and the other is by Good Riddance.
They’ve also got “Please Play This Song on the Radio” which is about as blatant as a “This song is a song” song gets.
That’s a pretty clever song, though I kind of feel it’s a little early in her career to be writing such a self-referential piece. However, I do like the lines:
And she’s rather cute, too.
Barry Manilow’s This One’s For You starts with:
“This one will never sell,
they’ll never understand,
I don’t even sing it well,
I try, but I just can’t.”
I don’t know if Sad Songs by Elton John qualifies or not:
“Guess there are times when we all need to share a little pain
And ironing out the rough spots
Is the hardest part when memories remain
And it’s times like these when we all need to hear the radio
`Cause from the lips of some old singer
We can share the troubles we already know”
I can’t believe someone already mentioned Cole Porter. shakes fist
Marty Balin’s “Hearts”:
It’s clear from the song’s context that he is indeeed singing the song that tells the world how he misses her.
The Who’s “Cook County” contains the (rather unfortunate, IMHO) line “This song is so long/it ends up where it begins.”
The Old 97s’ “Designs on You” may qualify. The song is the narrator’s attempt to convince a woman about to be married to another to have one last fling with him. He promises to keep it a secret…except of course for the song he’ll write about it: “I won’t tell a soul/except the people in the nightclub where I sing.”
If I remember correctly, En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” opened with a spoken line that went something like “Prejudice. Wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it goes!”