I have my car radio on a newer station in Atlanta. It’s platform is essentially Top 40, but it has older songs on heavy rotation.
Tone Loc has two of his songs in the rotation.
I was listening to Funky Cold Medina, and it comes to a verse talking about his dog.
“…and he did the WILD THING on my leg…”
Obviously there is a certain extent that both songs are going to sound the same. It is just, Tone Loc went out of his way to reference his earlier work.
Wild Thing
Which talks about … what you would expect it to be.
Are there any other examples, where there is no doubt that a verse is talking about one other specific song? Songs from other artists would also count.
Sting incorporates bits of his lyrics from older songs into his newer songs … or are you looking for one song that references the title of another song?
Love Is the Seventh Wave has lyrics from Every Breath You Take
Seven Days has lyrics from Every Little Thing She Does
*Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow *
Tone Loc also references the Stones’ *Satisfaction *in the song and includes a snippet of its distinctive drum break.
The Beatles did this often. Glass Onion is full of references to earlier Beatles songs (Strawberry Fields Forever, I am the Walrus, Fool on the Hill, Lady Madonna, and Fixing a Hole).
Come Together references Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me (“Here come a flat top…”). Springsteen also refers to part of the song in State Trooper. T. Rex’s Bang a Gong has a shout-out to Berry’s Little Queenie at the end (“Meanwhile, I was still thinkin’”). The structure of his Too Much Monkey Business was used by Bob Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues.
Getting back to Springsteen, *Thunder Road *mentions Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely (“As the radio plays/Roy Orbison singing for the lonely”).
Elvis Costello, “American Without Tears #2”: He packed up the casino chips, the IOUs, and the abacus/And switched off the jukebox in “A Fool Such as I”
Jaime Brockett’s “Legend of the USS Titanic” quotes Dylan’s “Bob Dylan’s Dream #115”: Like all tough sailors do when they’re far away at sea!
Yes’s “I’ve Seen All Good People” refers to an “Instant Karma” and has backing vocals chanting “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
The “She Gives Me Love” section of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe’s “Quartet” mentions the titles of several Yes songs: “Long Distance Runaround,” “South Side of the Sky,” “The Gates of Delirium,” and “Roundabout.”
Jethro Tull’s “Like a Tall, Thin Girl,” which sounds suspiciously like their much older song “Fat Man,” includes the line “Well, I may not be a fat man.” Two songs on Tull’s Warchild album, “Sea Lion” and “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day,” refer to a “Passion Play,” which was the title of their previous album.
Eddie Money’s Take Me Home Tonight is a pretty obvious one. I’m also thinking you’re not including any hip hop samples like T.I. and Rihanna’s Live Your Life which lifts from Dragostea Di Tei.
Beatles’ All You Need Is Love references She Loves You in the fadeout as well as samples Greensleeves and Glenn Miller’s In the Mood (for which they were apparently sued).
The Great Grandaddy of them all has to be American Pie with numerous examples ("…this’ll be the day that I die…", “Did you write The Book of Love…”, “…if The Bible Tells [You] So…”, “…with a Pink Carnation and a pickup truck…”, “*Helter Skelter * in a summer swelter…”, “Eight Miles High and falling fast…”, “…the Sergeants played a marching tune…”, “…Jack Flash sat on a candlestick…”), not to mention referencing numeous rockstars.
Don’t forget about all the “answer songs” that came out as well, since they directly reference other songs by their sheer existence: It’s My Party/ Judy’s Turn to Cry (Leslie Gore), Eve of Destruction (Barry McGuire) / Dawn of Correction (The Spokesmen), King of the Road (Roger Miller) / Queen of the House (Jody Miller), A Thousand Miles Away The Heartbeats / Daddy’s Home (Shep and the Limelites)
…there are numerous examples, and I could be here all day writing them out.
Kid Rock pretty much recycled all of Werewolves of London, and bits of *Sweet Home Alabama *and pieces of Bob Seger in “All Summer Long.” At least, musically, if not lyrically.
Aerosmith’s “What It Takes” has the line, “Girl, before I met you, I was F.I.N.E. fine,” a reference to their own earlier song F.I.N.E. (Someone once told me, “That doesn’t make the line any less stupid.”)
Peter, Paul and Mary did one a few years back called Old Enough that references both their song I Dig Rock and Roll Music and Woody Guthrie’s Talkin’ Union Blues.
In a classic country vein, Tennessee Waltz makes a circular reference to itself.
The Oak Ridge Boys’ Y’all Come Back Saloon references the song Faded Love.
In the first verse of “Runnin’ Down a Dream” Tom Petty has “the radio on” in the car and “Me and Del were singing/Little Runaway”. Petty is a fan of Del Shannon.
The Beatles’ “Glass Onion” references some earlier songs (“I told you 'bout Strawberry Fields” … “I told you 'bout the Fool on the Hill”) and also the cryptic line “Here’s another clue for you all/The walrus was Paul”
At the end of “Now I’m Here,” Queen sings “Go, go, go little queenie” a reference the much-covered Chuck Berry tune.
In the opening lines of “The Joker,” Steve Miller references two of his earlier songs, “Space Cowboy” and “Gangster of Love”
In Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” “…as the radio plays/Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/hey that’s me and I want you only” a reference to “Only the Lonely”
Rick Nelson’s Garden Party references several other songs: I Am the Walrus, Johnny B. Goode, and his own Mary Lou. (He also mentions “a song about a honky-tonk,” but I don’t know what that is, and there may be some other cryptic references to other songs.)
My favorite Veruca Salt song “Volcano Girls” does a homage to Glass Onion by having a line that proclaims “Seether’s Louise”: “Seether” was one of Veruca Salt’s earlier hits.