The other day I was driving back from daycare and James Taylor’s “Mexico” came on. At the very end when he’s doodling around he says “in a honky tonk down in Mexico”, referencing the Coasters’ classic.
It got me thinking…what is your favorite shout out to another song within a song? I’ll have to go with the reference to Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Up Above my Head” in the Tramps’ “Disco Inferno. What’s your favorite.
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Baud
Pharrell Williams & Robin Thicke, Blurred Lines // Marvin Gaye, Got to Give it Up
eemom
“Hope Neil Young will remember us southern men don’t need him around anyhow”
clay
Springsteen, “Thunder Road”. ”Roy Orbison singing for the lonely”
Slim from MA
A certain Mojo Nixon tune comes to mind ( stop playing that crap, you’re out of the band) but probably not exactly what you’re looking for. “Real, Real Gone” by Van the Man name checks a handful.
TL
Radar Love
Brenda Lee Coming on Strong
JPL
How about “We’ll sing in the sunshine” in honor of Adam’s post below. Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide might be more in tune with the times.
oldster
Shout out to “In the Mood” at the end of “All you need is love”?
That tune had been kicking around for a few years, but it took the great lyricist Andy Razaf to turn it into an irresistible ear-worm.
waspuppet
The Spinners’ “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love” has one of Philippe Wynne’s patented outchoruses; this time with “I used to sing ‘fa fa fa fa fa,’ but right now I’m feelin so good, I’m singin la la la la.” A shoutout AND meta.
SiubhanDuinne
This Gilbert & Sullivan fanatic loves the line in the “Modern Major-General” song from The Pirates of Penzance:
Probably not exactly what you were looking for ?
Gin & Tonic
Zappa (with Flo & Eddie) segueing into Happy Together on the mudshark album? Or doesn’t that count because it’s too perfect?
catclub
A day like today: Springtime for Hitler
oldster
@SiubhanDuinne:
That is *exactly* what he was looking for. Well remembered!
It makes me want to think up those Bach pieces where he starts quoting Buxtehude.
It’s an old, old game, and a good one. Humans like imitating each other, and outdoing each other, and sometimes good things are the result.
rp
Tom Petty:
It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down
I had the radio on, I was drivin’
Trees went by, me and Del were singin’ little Runaway
I was flyin
Edit: Although my favorite might be the snippet of “Mr. Soul” you hear at the beginning of Buffalo Springfield’s “Broken Arrow.”
Nicole
My favorite shout-out to another song within a song has got to be “Be my little baby” in Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight.” What do you mean, just “like” Ronnie sang, Eddie? It IS Ronnie!
Because come on, she’s the reason that song was a hit at all.
Taken4Granite
Don McLain’s “American Pie” has a few:
SiubhanDuinne
@oldster: When I worked in radio, I would occasionally put together a program called “Look What They’ve Done to My Song,” wherein I would play one composer’s take on another composer’s tune. Mostly theme-and-variations, but there are some lovely long-form examples. Stravinsky’s wonderful ballet, Le Baiser de la Fée, is a tribute to Tchaikovsky and full of his tunes. Tchaikovsky, in his turn, was a fine borrower — I refer you to his Mozartiana.
MuckJagger
Are the conditions *only* a line?
There’s an cult sci-fi (!) inspired song by the old Boston band Scruffy the Cat called “Moons of Jupiter.” It’s possible some have heard it; it’s popped up in a number of places including “Futurama.” (This is *not* the Train song “Drops of Jupiter.”)
About halfway through, for no apparent reason, they break into the old Tommy James song “I Think We’re Alone Now.”
I swear on a stack of 45’s it gets me singing every time I hear it.
low-tech cyclist
There, fixed that for ya!
Benw
The National’s Not in Kansas has a shout out to REM!
”and I’m listening to REM again,
begin the begin, over and over”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MqPSNfMacx4
meander
I’m sure there are more bouncing around in my brain, but because I watched the first episode of “They’ve Gotta Have Us” (a history of black cinema) on Netflix yesterday and it ends with Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” during the opening credits of “Do the Right Thing.” “Fight the Power” has a shout out to one of the tracks it samples, James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (from “In the Jungle Groove”):
In one of the documentaries about James Brown, Clyde Stubblefield, the drummer who came up with the beat during a late-night recording session, says 1) that he absolutely hates the “Funky Drummer” song, 2) he wishes he got paid by the artists who sampled the beat in their songs.
A slightly less direct shout out to James Brown is in one of Prince’s songs from “3121”, where he exhorts his band to “stay on the one” (“Get on the Boat?”), a reference to Brown’s cardinal rule about his music.
Shana
“Oh I’m Sorry (but so is Brenda Lee)” by Marshall Crenshaw.
“Levi Stubbs’ Tears” by Billy Bragg
Miss Bianca
@eemom: Then there’s Warren Zevon’s response to that song: “Sweet Home Alabama/Play that dead man’s song!”
ETA: Actually, the lines go:
Sweet Home Alabama
Play that dead band’s song!
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
miserybob
Got to call out one of my favorite John Prine songs, Lake Marie. It’s just a masterclass in songwriting, jumping back and forth in time, birth, love, death and a great call out to Louie Louie:
Many years later I found myself talking to this girl
Who was standing there with her back turned to Lake Marie
The wind was blowing especially through her hair
There was four Italian sausages cooking on the outdoor grill
And they was sizzlin’
Many years later we found ourselves in Canada
Trying to save our marriage and perhaps catch a few fish
Whatever came first, that night she fell asleep in my arms
Humming the tune to, “Louie Louie”
Aah baby, we gotta go now
piratedan
Raspberries “Overnight Sensation” has their own song played thru a radio speaker embedded in the recording… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARkj12Y6Uh4
Brachiator
@oldster:
The Beatles also quote themselves and sing “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” at the end of “All you need is love.
Another Scott
Sting often does that, referring to older Police songs. I think that’s cheating.
Steve Miller Band – The Joker
arielibra
@SiubhanDuinne: And here I thought I would be the oldest school represented… with the Glenn Miller Band’s parodies of the Ink Spots and Harry James in “Jukebox Saturday Night”.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
Maybe it doesn’t entirely count, but I love it anyway. The Rutles, “Hold My Hand” sung at the end of “Love Life,” in its original key.
robmassing
Eddie Money, “Take Me Home Tonight”
“Just like Ronnie sang, ‘Be my little baby'” (with Ronnie Spector singing live)
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: You made me do this…
clay
@Benw: And later in the same song:
”The flowers cover over everything, they cover over everything.”
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Eh, blockquote fail because B-J was taking forever.
Seems Ok now?
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@arielibra: Not at all! As Oldster points out at #12, the practice goes back at least to the Baroque, and probably much further back than that.
P. S. I do like “Jukebox Saturday Night”!
chopper
sylvan esso’s “coffee” shouts out to hanky panky. dunno.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: A saying from my music major days:
“Everyone robs from everyone else but puts their own spin on it.”
Mozart shamelessly cribbed from Haydn. Once you hear it you can’t not hear it.
clay
From Belle & Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher”:
I wish that you were here with me to pass the dull weekend
I know it wouldn’t come to love, my heroine pretend
A lady stepping from the song we love until this day
You’d settle for an epitaph like “Walk Away, Renee”
PST
How about Men at Work’s brief flute allusion to “Kookaburra” in “Down Under.” That cost them plenty (very unjustly).
Lavocat
For my money, I’ve got to go with an oldie but a goodie: Simon and Garfunkel’s “A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)” from their album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme”, way back in 1966. Just chock full of cultural references and a few songs.
Jim Parish
I love Johnny Rivers’ “Summer Rain”, which has a recurring reference to Sgt. Pepper.
mad citizen
Tom Waits in Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis, has a reference to playing that record from Little Anthony and the Imperials. In concert Tom would then sing “Going out of my head. Going Out of my head.. .going out of my head..over you.”
In Waits “I Wish I was in New Orleans ” he references “when the saints go marching in”
delk
Hands Open by Snow Patrol
Put Sufjan Stevens on
And we’ll play your favorite song
‘Chicago’ bursts to life and your
Sweet smile remembers you,
mad citizen
@Lavocat: Love that song! It’s hard to find, I heard it and the story on Sirius radio. Guess it was a satire of Dylan’s mid-60s stuff. Very funny stuff.
opiejeanne
Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight: Just like Ronnie sang, Be My Little Baby”.
cleek
Elliot Smith’s “Waltz #2” checks “Cathy’s Clown” (and also “You’re No Good”, and Stephen Bishop’s “On and On”)
Pavement’s “Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence” is entirely about REM:
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano: All very true. I learned the same lessons in my own music major days.
Pappy G
Highway Patrolman – Bruce Springsteen
“Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played Night of the Johnstown Flood…”
West of the Rockies
I like how “River” opens with “Jingle Bells” before turning into the ballad of love and regret we all know.
Wyatt Derp
Soft Cell – Tainted Love segues into Where Did Our Love Go?
Barbara
The Persuasions, “Night Shift,” which is a tribute to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye.
opiejeanne
@Nicole: You beat me to it.
prostratedragon
@Yutsano:
Yeah, the frequency of that is so great that I’m having trouble thinking of a clear example.
I will say that it was a wonderful moment when it hit me what “Bitches Brew” sounds like a cover of. You have to let it creep up on you for best effect.
Roger Moore
@JPL:
Especially because the chorus has been suggested as an alternative thing to sing to time your hand washing.
ETA: Does “Glass Onion” count as a song referencing other songs, since it’s all about their own work?
RandyG
For us older rock n’ roll types: Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time” references Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Dear Lady Twist”, The Tokens “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and The Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Van Morrison finishes out Real Real Gone thusly
Wilson Pickett said:
“In the midnight hour,
That’s when my love comes tumbling down”
Solomon Burke said:
“If you need me, why don’t you call me”
James Brown said:
“When you’re tired of what you got, try me”
Gene Chandler said:
“There’s a rainbow in my soul”
FelonyGovt
Back In The USSR which is essentially a big Beach Boys parody.
And the Traveling Wilburys’ Tweeter and the Monkey Man which has multiple references to Springsteen songs- Thunder Road, etc.
LeftCoastYankee
It’s not a shout out to a song but the IIRC the 3 note open to Beethoven’s Fifth is the Morse code rhythm for “V”, as in Victory against Napoleon.
Also I think ELO samples it in their cover of “Rollover Beethoven”.
Not sure if it counts but the Jayhawks song “Ms. Williams Guitar” is an all time fave.
Tym
PJ Harvey’s “Words That Maketh Murder” with its “What if I take my problems to the United Nations?” coda.
LightCastle
Not exactly on target, but in keeping with the “musicians are going to constantly slip references to things in for themselves”, my sister’s song “Iceman (Murders in the Rue Morgue)” was actually just a collection of references to Val Kilmer’s entire filmography as it existed at the time she wrote it.
Roger Moore
@FelonyGovt:
I think that would technically be a pastiche rather than a parody. A parody is making fun of a specific work, while a pastiche is making fun of a style.
guachi
Foetus put The Hall of the Mountain King into his industrial song Throne of Agony
LightCastle
@LeftCoastYankee: I think Beethoven’s 5th predates morse code by several decades, doesn’ t it?
As far as an actual call out, Leonard Cohen throws a shout out to Hank Williams in “Tower of Song”.
Jim Parish
@FelonyGovt: I think, and Wikipedia confirms, that “Back in the USSR”‘s direct inspiration was Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA”, although “California Girls” did have some influence.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The Beatles Savory Truffle…
Both Harrison and Lennon hated the song and resented the amount of time spent recording it.
Speaking of Lennon…
Shana
@clay: Damn! Totally forgot about that one. Thanks
Also “Jackie Wilson said it was Reet Petite” by Van Morrison
crshark
From the Commodores’ Night Shift, their tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson:
“Marvin sang of the joy and pain… And I still can hear him say
Aw talk to me so you can see/What’s going on”
Also: “It seems like yesterday/When we were working out” and “Your love, it lifted us/Higher and higher”
Aleta
@crshark: good one
TomV
Joni Mitchell’s Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody wholesale incorporation of the Righteous Brothers.
lowcountryboil
@cleek: On the same album, Elliott’s “Baby Britain” also has a couple of references – an album and a song:
“The light was on but it was dim
Revolver’s been turned over
And now it’s ready once again
The radio is playing Crimson and Clover”
PAM Dirac
Of course the Persuasions also have “Lookin’ for an Echo” which quotes a lot of doo-wop songs.
FelonyGovt
@Roger Moore:
@Jim Parish:
Fair enough. It’s always reminded me of California Girls.
JanieM
Ballad of the St. Anne’s Reel. That’s David Mallett doing it — the guy who wrote it. A lot of other people have recorded it, this is the one I know best.
Probably every fiddler on earth — including me in a younger incarnation — has played the St. Anne’s Reel itself. Here’s Aly Bain, not my favorite version, but that one was embedded in a TV show and I can’t find it right now.
Mo' Salad
Bare Naked Ladies finishing “Hello City” with the chorus of The Housemartins’ “Happy Hour”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FelonyGovt: The harmonies were inspired by The Beach Boys.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@miserybob: One of the best “song reference in a song” songs.
We gotta go now. Timeless.
opiejeanne
@LeftCoastYankee: Beethoven’s 5th, it’s 4 notes: dit dit dit dah.
And Morse hadn’t been born yet.
paulnix
Prince’s shout out to Joni’s “Help Me” in The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker
WaterGirl
@Mo’ Salad: Just a reminder about that pesky apostrophe…
Deep Southerner
The brass riff from Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Spinning Wheel” (“What goes up/Must come down …”) to start “Night Train” by Public Enemy.
Wileybud
@Brachiator: Another Beatles song quote:
Standing on the cast iron shore, yeah
Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet, yeah
Looking through the glass onion
Miss Bianca
@JanieM: Oh, thank goodness you mentioned that song – I have to compile a list for BMI and ASCAP of every cover song any band playing in our venue does, and the band who came last week played that one. Had no idea who had written it, figured I would have to Google it.
Chris Johnson
Do band references count?
“Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening…”
Steely Dan, Everything You Did
Kevin Moore
Toward the end of Genesis’ “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” Peter Gabriel quotes George Benson’s “On Broadway.” Well, misquotes. Here is Gabriel:
They say the lights are always bright on Broadway.
They say there’s always magic in the air.
The original by Benson goes:
They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway
Anyway, I loved that as a kid.
JanieM
@Miss Bianca: :-)
The Golux
I don’t know if it was a deliberate nod to “The Last Train To Clarksville” (I certainly hope it was): the “No-no-nos” at the end of Lake Street Dive’s “I Don’t Care About You” get my vote.
sphouch
I love the reference to Pagliacci in Tears of a Clown. But then, I also think that Smokey is the best voice of the 1960s and Tears of a Clown is a top 10 all timer.
Onkel Fritze
Not a song but a concert. Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’:
‘Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around but some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground’.
True story.
James E Powell
@Kevin Moore:
That’s the one I was going to mention.
David Bowie also quotes “On Broadway” at the end of Aladdin Sane.
Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem quotes “Night Moves” in the bridge of “Great Expectations.”
Feather as a Light
I always liked Rush’s Spirit of the Radio:
“For the words of the profits
Were written on the studio wall
Concert hall”
From Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence:
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls”
When I was a teenager I thought Rush was so cool. Listening to them as an adult I realized that I had totally missed how tongue-in-cheek they were.
Amir Khalid
Nearly every line of American Pie has a reference to other music or other musicians:
The Jester sang for the king and queen/In a coat he borrowed from James Dean/And a voice that came from you and me
And while the King was looking down/The Jester stole his thorny crown
Eight Miles High and falling fast
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on the candlestick
dp
“Yer Blues” shoutout to “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “Feel so suicidal, just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones.”
oldster
@sphouch:
“But then, I also think that Smokey is the best voice of the 1960s and Tears of a Clown is a top 10 all timer.”
I second that emotion!!
Sandia Blanca
@LightCastle: The Austin Lounge Lizards have a loving tribute to the Tower of Song in “Leonard Cohen ‘s Day Job.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=392mA-AwJlk#action=share
Johannes
In Dusty Springfield’s cover of “Windmills of Your Mind” as the song ends, you can hear a snippet of “Let’s Spend the Night Together
karpo
@eemom: Then the Warren Zevon response to that: “Sweet Home, Alabama. Play that dead band’s song. Turn the music up real loud and play it all night long.
fun with duct tape
1 – Cole Porter, “Begin the Beguine:”
When they begin the beguine,
It brings back the sound of music so tender . . . .
2 – Noel Coward, “Nina:”
She declined to begin the beguine when they besought her to,
And in language profane and obscene she cursed the man who taught her to,
She cursed Cole Porter, too.
S-Curve
Surprised not to see the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton,” probably my favorite song about another artist. “I never travel far / Without a little Big Star…”
...now I try to be amused
When this grey world crumbles like a cake
I’ll be hanging from the hope
That I’ll never see that recipe again
— They Might Be Giants, “It’s Not My Birthday”
Referencing “MacArthur Park”, of course.
SteverinoCT
@opiejeanne:
And ‘q’, quebec, is “Here Comes The Bride”– dah dah dit dah
Trains blow that at crossings.
russell
songs about other singers:
“when smokey sings” by abc
“levi’s stubb’s tears” by billy bragg”
songs with other songs
“and the band played waltzing matidla” by eric bogle [and dozens of cover versions]
“jerusalem” by dave stewart and barbara gaskin
“walk of life” by dire straits
and my fave, “one of these days” by jill sobule
here’s the relevant part>>>
One of these days and it’ll be real soon
I’m gonna kick some ass
Gonna clean my room
Sometime soon
One of these days I’m gonna touch the sky
Like that awful song
“I believe I can fly”
“I believe I can fly”