Revocation does it in Exhumed Identity from their first album, Empire Of The Obscene (at 6:12).
http://lyrics.wikia.com/Robbie_Fulks:Fountains_Of_Wayne_Hotline By Robbie Fulks
Slightly Distorted Melodic Solo-- CHECK!
Johnny Winter “Tired Of Trying”
Shouts something as he goes into the middle solo, sounds like “Guitar!” to me.
.
And similarly 2nd half of part one of Tubular Bells also with Viv Stanshall
“the universe was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song”
“A Little Help from My Friends” by…um er…
What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song,
And I’ll try not to sing out of key.
… [sings the rest of song, a little off key, unless my ears deceive me] …
I’m singing in the rain,
Singing in the rain,
-----Gene Kelly
It’s not really a new thing.
If we are counting stuff like this, there is a Doctor Feelgood song (maybe “Down at the Doctor’s”) with a shout of “Eight bars of piano!” at the start of the instrumental break. The trouble is, there s no piano in it!
Another, in the same song, goes “I hope you heard this song, and it pissed you off.”
I love this album, and love this song. We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life story. It’s the one I came in here to mention.
There’s at least another reference on that album, though - Mexico.
And I suppose it’s debatable whether Nada is referring to itself or not…there ain’t no moral to this story at all, anything I tell you very well could be a lie.
Man I love this album.
From another band, I offer Satellite, by Strung Out. the whole song is a letter to someone, about writing a song, which is pretty much the one being sang…
No, that is an original Bragg verse. It was just “They put you on the pill” when he sang it.
And yes, you need to get more of his albums! Talking to the Taxman about Poetry and Worker’s Playtime are both brilliant.
Billy Joel practically lives for this stuff.
“They say that no one’s gonna play this on the radio; they said the melancholy blues were dead and gone; but only songs like these, played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.”
“It’s a beautiful song, but it ran too long; if you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit – so they cut it down to 3:05.”
“Someday your child may cry, and if you sing this lullabye, then in your heart there will always be a part of me.”
“Nothing left for a dream now, only one final serenade. And these are the last words I have to say, before another age goes by with all those other songs I’ll have to play, but that’s the story of my life .”
Not to mention the way he’s got the audience breaking the fourth wall in PIANO MAN.
This Billy Joel fan is :smack: over not thinking of any of these, then nodding along as I read them.
Two more by Strung Out:
Alien Amplifier
Dirty Little Secret
Fall Out Boy - From “Sugar We’re Going Down”:
“I’m just a notch in your bedpost,
But you’re just a line in a song”
Also, Song For The Asking.
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” (“Woke up this morning and I wrote down this song…”).
Richie Havens’ “Handsome Johnny” (“Hey, what’s the use of singing this song/Some of you are not even listening”).
A lot of old folk songs are self-referential, either starting with a line like “I’ll sing you a song and it won’t take long…” or ending with a line like “So that’s the end of my story…”.
This is off topic, but the one that always gets me is the infinite regress of “The Tennessee Waltz”, which is about someone who loses her lover to another woman while the band plays “The Tennessee Waltz”, which is about someone who… AAAAAGHH
Manfred Mann went one better by recording a version of “Tennessee Waltz” in 4/4 time, so the song itself is no longer the “waltz” referred to in the lyrics, yet it still is “The Tennessee Waltz.” Infinite regress and cognitive dissonance!
Elvis broke the 4th wall in a different way with “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, his second single. It starts out in the slow, Bill Monroe 3/4 tempo. Then Elvis stops the proceedings, saying, “Hold on, boys, that don’t move me none. Let’s get real gone for a change.” Then they restart it as a rock ‘n’ roll version.
Canadians of a certain age or older may remember a song trilogy by Edward Bear.
First was “You, Me and Mexico.” It isn’t particularly self referential, although the singer is “stuck in the city still going no where” and at that part of their career, they weren’t going anywhere.
Song two, back to the same well. The Last Song"
“This is the last song, I’ll ever write for you… the last time I will ever tell how much I really care” which references writing the previous song about the girl who effed off on him to go traveling. He’s written about her before, but now he’s done.
Finally in “Close Your Eyes" she comes back home because as she says “I see you’ve written one Last Song” and I realize its mine” of course, in the end she leaves again.
So that’s a meta-song trilogy. Or at least 2/3 are.