The 10 best songs about songs
For any artist, there’s no right or wrong place to draw inspiration from. While most love songs can come from some real heartache that someone is feeling for another person, it’s sometimes easier to have a track written for someone to lash out in anger or try to understand the complex side of their emotions. In the case of artists like Bob Dylan, it turned out that other songs served as the perfect fodder to write a tune about.
While there’s a certain meta-irony when it comes to writing songs about songs, don’t get the wrong impression. Despite many writers having a tendency to crawl up their own ass at times (*cough cough*), there’s still a great way for artists to make tracks either to comment on hearing their favourite songs for the first time or using the wrong tune as fodder for their pure spite towards another person.
So when looking at a lot of the ditties here, they tend to run the gamut for what the tune in question is supposed to be. Sometimes, someone might find their calling to be a rockstar through them, and others might be so enraged that they make an entirely new track in an attempt to stomp the other into oblivion. It’s not always clean fighting, but all’s fair in love and writing whenever anyone picks up a guitar and a pen.
Even though it’s hard to get wrapped up in some of them if you don’t know the song that’s being referenced, the best examples are done so well that most would hardly even notice it. Because if there’s one thing that constitutes great art, it’s making commentary that’s so well-written that everyone hardly notices it.
The 10 best songs written about songs:
10. ‘Radio Radio’ – Elvis Costello
Some of the greatest artists of all time got their start listening to the radio. Even though streaming has taken over for the radio waves these days, it was everything for many early rockers to wait for hours on end until they heard their favourite tune blast over the airwaves. Once Elvis Costello saw what was really going on, though, ‘Radio Radio’ became both a love story and a spite letter towards the medium that helped raise him.
Since he was brought up in the punk tradition, Costello’s new wave flavour of rock has everything he would need for a chart hit, only this time he has a bit more venom in his veins. The lion’s share of the lyrics may be about him thinking about those days when he was a kid listening to the radio, but given how much he talks about radio having control over people, he’s starting to see that most don’t have a choice other than hearing whatever is shoved down their throats by the payola-driven parts of the business.
So when he says a line like ‘you better listen to your radio,’ it may as well be Big Brother checking in to make sure that no one changes the dial for a second. Costello might not have fit into the same punk crowds that someone like Joe Strummer did, but with sharp critiques like this, he was equally as likely to put together something that could lead a musical revolution.
9. ‘Heart Songs’ – Weezer
Weezer was never a band that was meant to challenge the status quo all that much. As much as they didn’t fit the realm of what a rock band should be, their songs in the 1990s felt like the greatest Beach Boys never released that happened to be played with fuzzy guitars. There was a lot more to Rivers Cuomo’s musical background, though, and ‘Heart Songs’ sees him taking everyone on a ride through his childhood.
While this kind of scenario could have easily become Cuomo’s ‘Juke Box Hero,’ the softspoken acoustic guitar sounds like him sitting in a comfy chair reminiscing on his favourite acts, whether that’s banging his head to Quiet Riot when he was a kid to learning licks from Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. He doesn’t forget the more embarrassing moments as well, like mislabelling ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ to Debbie Gibson instead of Tiffany and namechecking songs like ‘It Takes Two’.
But the real payoff moment comes at the end where he sings about hearing Nirvana’s Nevermind for the first time and then forming his first band, resulting in the nerdy bunch of rockers that we have today. While other songwriters have done a lot more with a topic like this, ‘Heart Songs’ is the kind of genuine slice of nostalgia that manages to be cringy and heartfelt at the same time.
8. ‘After the Thrill is Gone’ – Eagles
The Eagles have been a lot of things throughout their career, but bluesy was never one of them. Even if they have had countless hits on the radio, they were never exactly in the same category as the Stevie Ray Vaughans or the ZZ Tops of the world. But Don Henley and Glenn Frey did have an affinity for the blues, and when they stumbled upon BB King’s iconic version of ‘The Thrill is Gone,’ they helped continue the story that the blues legend couldn’t have told with only a guitar.
While King’s tune works better than ‘After The Thrill is Gone’ by keeping the melancholic angle, ‘After The Thrill Is Gone’ is a nice look at the aftermath of everything. Most people can talk about what it’s like to break up with someone, but Henley sings about what happens when two people are still perfectly fine together but have that signature spark of romance flame out over the years.
It’s the kind of unfortunate circumstance that many people find themselves in, but it’s nice to have a song like this to actually acknowledge when things aren’t as romantically happy as they should be. After all, Eagles were country rockers, and they lived by the tradition that Willie Nelson talked about long ago: most people end up with the wrong person, and that’s what makes the jukebox spin.
7. ‘The Spirit of Radio’ – Rush
The radio format has never exactly been kind to progressive rock. Although countless artists can be found on the oldies stations that constitute classic rock, like Pink Floyd and Genesis, the songs that take up entire sides of vinyl like the ones Rush were writing weren’t exactly going to make their way into the Top 40 the same time that The Carpenters were having mainstream hits. The Canadian icons had grown up on radio, though, and Permanent Waves saw them toying with mainstream sounds for the first time in ages.
Despite Hemispheres being too cerebral for even the band to understand, ‘The Spirit of Radio’ is about as catchy as they come, with Neil Peart writing lyrics about the thrill that comes with hearing those DJs in the morning introducing everyone to new songs that would change the world. Even Alex Lifeson is in on the tone painting, with that opening guitar lick sounding like flipping through a radio dial before the main beat drops in.
Peart could get a little bit jaded when he wanted to as well, writing lines about ‘the sound of salesmen’ after touring with bands like Kiss and watching them do the same stage rap with every crowd they played to and claiming it was the best city that they had ever played. Compared to them, Rush was to the point, and while radio would be kind to them, they didn’t necessarily need it to succeed either.
6. ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ – Roberta Flack
There’s a certain romantic edge that comes with seeing an intimate gig with a musician. Even if they aren’t the most technically skilled artist in the world, having the right delivery can make anyone feel like they’re singing directly to you with only a guitar in their hands. And when Lori Liberman got the chance to hear Don McLean sing about his inner heartache, she could have fallen to pieces.
While McLean has one great song-centric tune in ‘American Pie,’ ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ is a better indication of what music does to a person when they see it live. Despite it being a lovestruck lyric, the real meaning behind the track is about how a good singer could reduce anyone to a tear-filled mess if they find that secret passageway into your heart in only a few lines.
And by the time Roberta Flack got ahold of the tune, she made it seem like whatever song McLean sang was having a visceral reaction on her, practically weeping her way through the tune and wondering how she would ever get over him. This kind of reaction might seem like an overzealous fan of McLean taking things a bit too far, but when you’re that head over heels when the music plays, love can make someone do crazy things.
5. ‘This Song’ – George Harrison
George Harrison was always the odd man out when it came to writing tracks in The Beatles. Even though he could make fantastic songs on his own, he always seemed left on the side while John Lennon and Paul McCartney bounced ideas off each other. While ‘My Sweet Lord’ did give him one of his first major hits, the accompanying lawsuit made for the perfect fodder for another one of his backhanded classics.
Because by the time Harrison saw royalties coming in for ‘My Sweet Lord’, he was already in court over it being abundantly similar to The Chiffon’s ‘He’s So Fine,’ which he ended up losing in the long run. That kind of blow usually leads someone to never want to make music ever again, but Harrison knew that the only way to deal with something this desensitising was humour, writing ‘This Song’ as a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone doesn’t check themselves.
Compared to the other goofy music videos Harrison was making for tunes like ‘Crackerbox Palace,’ this felt like him doing his take on a Schoolhouse Rock track decades before it even existed. He may have had to get a slap on the wrist, but is there a better power move for any songwriter to make than to take their lawsuit and turn it into their next chart hit?
4. ‘Complete Control’ – The Clash
No matter how much money any musician’s song makes, it normally comes back down to business. Although most people get into the industry to have some fun writing the best music they can, it’s hard to stay optimistic when looking at all of the royalties start falling into the wrong hands. So when Joe Strummer started realising all of the ethics of the record company, ‘Complete Control’ became the ultimate retort to anyone who was willing to sign on the dotted line with no questions asked.
Although Strummer was more than happy to write tunes about the injustices going on in England, this was a case of him getting more agitated when their label didn’t want them to release certain tracks. Their debut was already a smash success, but ‘Remote Control’ proved to be too controversial, so Strummer wrote this tune about the higher-ups who think they can use their talent like puppets to make the ultimate version of what a supposed punk rock band should be.
And considering his ruthlessness in a song like ‘White Riot’, Strummer proves himself to still be the king of the one-liner, like when he calls for the suits to show him their other hand and how they are trying their best to have control even over the song that they are singing. While ‘Complete Control’ was eventually released on the US version of The Clash’s debut album, there’s no better way to get back at the record company than to make something deliberately out of line.
3. ‘4th Time Around’ – Bob Dylan
By the time the 1960s kicked into high gear, Bob Dylan looked up and realised he had some competition. Most people would be happy to be in his position and have millions of people singing along to his tune, but now there had been multiple generations of copycats trying their hand at making their own folksy critique about the human condition. And when Dylan started hearing one of the greatest bands of all time taking a few cues from him, he didn’t want to roll over.
Since The Beatles had already started to embrace folk rock on Rubber Soul, ‘4th Time Around’ was made as a retort back to John Lennon. Although Dylan meant it as a playful jab, hearing him knick the exact guitar riff from ‘Norwegian Wood’ was his way of keeping them in check, as if to say that this was his territory and that he was still going to make biting folk music better than anyone else.
The release subsequently made Lennon a little bit paranoid, but that was hardly a problem for Dylan. He was meant to stir the pot ever since he first released tunes like ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’, and even though he considered them friends, this was still proof that no one was safe from his pen.
2. ‘Serve the Servants’ – Nirvana
There are only a handful of songs in rock history that have had the same cultural impact as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Even though Kurt Cobain had an idea that the song was pretty good, hearing millions of people tuning in to hear his critique of MTV and how phoney music had become was a bit too much for him to take in. He was eyed as being famous, but not this much, and ‘Serve the Servants’ was one of the sharpest instances where musicians wrote tunes as critiques against themselves.
While In Utero already starts off with a massive clangour of noise, the sharp guitar riff sets the tone for ‘Serve the Servants’ as the anti-’Teen Spirit’. Outside of the biting tone of the record and the massive ambience in the room, Cobain’s lyrics are as blunt as possible about what the song did to him, saying that he’s happy to have profited off of teen angst and now is unsure what to do now that he’s bored and old.
Since he was still considered the voice of a generation, his lyrics sound like someone who’s just as confused as everyone else as to where to go and is clawing out at everything he can get his hands on to find some kind of meaning behind his star power. Even though it’s nice to see him channelling that pain through his music, ‘Serve the Servants’ is all the more tragic today, knowing that he would never find a proper outlet for his pain.
1. ‘This Land Is Your Land’ – Woody Guthrie
The only thing any musician can ask for is someone to sing their songs back to them. No one has to say that they like it, per se, but if someone can repeat those words back to the writer, there’s some unspoken connection, knowing that they have found someone whose heart beats the same way they do. And before rock and roll had even begun, Woody Guthrie was writing the kind of tunes that were willing to embrace everyone under one roof.
Despite the patriotic songs that were on the rise during World War II, Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ was a way for him to combat blind patriotism. ‘God Bless America’ may have been a fine tune on its own, but that wasn’t all of what the US was about, and Guthrie sought to highlight the all-inclusive side of the country, thinking that it was made for everyone rather than those who wanted citizens to live by a certain code of ethics.
Even if he may have been labelled as unpatriotic for writing something that was this blunt at the time, Guthrie was more ‘American’ at that moment than 90% of the population. The whole point of a song is being able to say what you feel, and if it meant one person playing a song to remind us that everyone deserves a shot in the country, then Guthrie was the one put on this Earth to write it.
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