Self-Reflexive Songs

Self-Reflexive Songs are songs whose lyrics refer to the song itself as though it was a separate entity.


Examples are:


Carly Simon's "You're so Vain" with the lyrics "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you."


Elton John's "Your Song" with "And you can tell everybody this is your song It may be quite simple, but now that it's done."


The Beautiful South's "Song for Whoever" with "I wrote this song for you".


David Bowie's "Five Years" with "I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long; Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think you knew you were in this song,"


Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" with "Here is a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note."


Spamalot's "The Song that Goes Like This" with amongst almost completely self-reflexive lyrics "For this is the song that goes like this. Yes it is. Yes it is!"


The Song That Never Ends with "This is the song that goes on forever, Cause it never ever ends"


It is not the same as self-relection where the writer refers to themselves but where the writer refers to the song itself. Often the lyrics are self-reflexive in a knowing, humourous way so as to emphasise the artifice in the song.


Note: There use to be a list of Self-Reflexive Songs on Wikipedia. A copy of that list can be found here.

Covers of Cover Versions in Pop Music

Sometimes a cover version can do better than the original version. The original artist then can end up performing the song as if doing a cover of the cover. An example is Neil Diamond copying UB40's reggae version of "Red, Red Wine". His original version had been quite different but it was the UB40 version that everyone knew, so that was how he did the song in concerts after UB40 had had the big hit with their version.


Similarly Madness had a big hit with a very different arrangement of Labi Siffre's song "It must be love". However a version of the song copying the Madness arrangement was used iin a television commercial. Because they were not performing on the music used in the commercial nor had they written the song Madness received nothing from the use of the song although it was so similar to their version that many people thought it was them performing on the commercial. The royalties of course went to Labi Siffre.


"House of the Rising Sun" was a traditional folk song. Dave Van Ronk used to perform the song at concerts in New York and was going to record a version of it. However Bob Dylan copied his version and recorded it for his first album in 1962. So when Van Ronk performed this at later concerts it appeared that he was copying Dylan even though Van Ronk had performed the song first. In a strange twist another arrangement of the song became a big hit for The Animals, so that Bob Dylan stopped performing the song because people thought he was covering The Animal's version.