Title Drop/Music
- Pretty much any song in existence (other than songs with Non-Appearing Titles) will have a Title Drop somewhere in there, usually in the chorus.
- In general, it's more rare for a song to NOT have a title drop than to have one. And when it doesn't, it usually leads to Refrain From Assuming. (For example, many people think the title of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is actually "Major Tom", but it isn't.)
- This goes double for title songs in musicals.
- Additionally, most albums are named after one of the songs, which is a type of Title Drop.
- And there's also the Album Title Drop, where a song lyric names the album (examples in that page).
- 90% of the lyrics of The Beatles song "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" are..."Why don't we do it in the road?" repeated over and over. It doesn't just have a Title Drop, it is a Title Drop.
- To clarify: the song has eighteen lines. "No one will be watching us" is sung three times. The other fifteen lines? ...yeah. Which would make it 83.3 repeating percent.
- The Beatles' song "Glass Onion" actually title-drops a handful of their previous songs, coming off a bit like a catchy clip-show.
- "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Both are late Beatles songs written by John, and both have almost no words other than the titles. I want you is almost 8 minutes and only 14 words, so it's more or less the epitome of this trope.
- Similar to The Beatles examples, the lyrics to an Indonesian song, I just want to say I love you, is just that repeated over and over, with differing tones.
- DragonForce loves to Title Drop its song titles in other songs: just one example of many is the line "Through the fire, through the flames" in the song "The Flame Of Youth."
- Their song "Operation Ground and Pound" opens with the lines "Smashing through the boundaries/Storming through the burning fields" as a reference to "Storming the Burning Fields," which comes later on the album.
- Green Day's Twenty First Century Breakdown tends to mention the name of an act in a song near the beginning of that act.
- Counting Crows title-drops the band itself on their song A Murder Of One ("as you stood there, counting crows").
- On the track "Tempus Fugit" from Yes' album Drama, the word "YES!" is mentioned so often, and with such pathos, that you'd think they were trying to make "Tempus Fugit" the band's title song.
- Drama was the first (and as it turned out, only) Yes album not to feature lead singer Jon Anderson, so maybe they were just trying to reassure listeners that they were still Yes.
- Many rappers namedrop themselves in their songs.
- Almost all of Michael Jackson's songs, especially his bigger hits and singles, have a title drop usually sung repeatedly. In fact, it's difficult to find a song that doesn't.
- Metallica mentions their own name in the song "Whiplash" on the album Kill 'Em All;
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Hotel rooms and motorways |
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- Megadeth's song "Victory" is almost entirely made up of previous song/album names.
- Rhapsody of Fire always have a song on any given album with the same name as the album itself, the semi-exception being Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret ("semi" because there is still a track called "The Dark Secret"). of course, this isn't exactly unique. What's a bit more unique is towards the end of 19 minute epic Gargoyles, Angels of Darkness, in which they drop the titles of all their previous albums (Legendary Tales, Symphony of Enchanted Lands, Dawn of Victory, Rain of a Thousand Flames)...
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And this is then the epic end |
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- Manowar's song "Kings Of Metal" features the band's name twice each chorus, as well as throughout the verses. Eric Adams also lets out a number of lengthy screams bringing the total over a dozen. It is, in fact, the first and second word of the song:
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Manowar, Manowar, livin' on the road |
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- The first line of the lyrics of "Chelsea Girl" by Ride is "Take me for a ride away from places I have known". (Incidentally, this is the first song on their first record, which happens to be a self-titled EP, making this also an Album Title Drop.)
- The Hold Steady drop their band name several times, including "Positive Jam" ("All the sniffling indie kids: hold steady"), "Slapped Actress" ("Our hands will hold steady"), "Most People Are DJs" ("Hold steady, Ybor City") and "Knuckles" ("It's hard to hold steady when half your friends are dead already")
- British rock band Muse uses this in their most recent album The Resistance, with the line "You are my muse," in the song "I Belong to You."
- Both Title and Band Name Drop: Iron Maiden's "Iron Maiden", from the album Iron Maiden ("Iron Maiden can't be fought, Iron Maiden can't be sought").
- Brave Saint Saturn: In the song "Atropos" from The Light of Things Hoped For: "You are brave in this darkness, Saint Saturn".
- AFI, short for A Fire Inside, have a couple: "We are the ones who have a fire inside" from "Keeping Out of Direct Sunlight (an Introduction)" and "Will the flood behind me put out the fire inside me?" from "The Missing Frame."
- The Dream Theater album Metropolis Pt.2: Scenes From a Memory gets its title drop in the song Home: "The city- it calls to me/ Decadent scenes from my memory." In addition, the theme of the sleeper and the miracle is a title drop of Metropolis Prt.1: The Miracle and The Sleeper, which in turn contains title drops of various songs in Prt.2 (the dance of eternity, and metropolis to name a few)
- Part 3 of "Octavarium" drops various titles of Mike Portnoy's favorite songs
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Sailing on the seven seize the day tripper diem's ready |
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- Miracle of Sound always has a Title Drop in the chorus of their songs.
- Shiny Toy Guns' "When They Came For Us" doesn't have a song title drop, but does have a band name drop: "And I miss everyone. But most of all the little ones. And their shiny toy guns."
- The Stone Roses song 'Where Angels Play' is an odd case, as the demo contains the title but the version considered 'finished' (itself little more than a demo) featured on the 'I Wanna Be Adored' single and the 'Turns Into Stone' compilation album, does not.
- Another band name drop is the song "Talk Talk" by...Talk Talk! Which was written by Mark Hollis to be recorded by a proto-Talk Talk group, supposedly.
- Very subtle example: in Come to Daddy (Mummy Mix) by Aphex Twin, at about 1:30 you can hear a voice say "Aphex Twin" on the stereo right channel. Listen.
- The Finnish power metal band Nightwish loves doing this. A few examples are: Nightwish (from Angels Fall First. It's a demo, and consequently, also the band's namesake.), Nemo, Stargazers, Amaranth, Bless the Child, and Planet Hell.
- There's also Bad Company originally performed by the band Bad Company which appeared on the album Bad Company (Later covered by Five Finger Death Punch)
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And that's why they call me |
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- Five Finger Death Punch title drops all three of their albums in one song off of Music/American Capitalist in the song American Capitalist.
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Yeah war is the answer, like I told you before
I don't believe in self important folks who preach / |
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- The Spin Doctors drop their band name twice in "What Time Is It?" The first verse ends with the line "Use a little English to doctor the spin"; the second verse ends with the line "Spin doctor, it's oh so sad".
- Interesting example : "Up the Junction" by the British band Squeeze has no chorus, and the title doesn't appear at all - until the very end:
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I'd beg for her forgiveness |
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- Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" is sort of the same, although it does have a chorus (albeit one that consists solely of "lie la lie" repeated endlessly). The title is not acknowledged until the final verse.
- In a glorious version of this trope, Swedish power metal band Sabaton's first album Primo Victoria ends with the song "Metal Machine", the lyrics of which are built around the titles of songs by other metal bands (as well as its own):
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Riding on this crazy train |
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- The song "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves" from Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow has Dio randomly throwing in the title from the back row.
- The Lover Speaks dropped their name in their only hit "No More I Love You’s" ("The lover speaks about the monsters"). If that song title sounds familiar, it’s because Annie Lennox’s cover version is better known.
- While Prince had the Love Symbol as his name, one of his songs was actually titled "Love Sign".
- Korn had their song Children of the Korn.
- In the Godsmack song Crying Like a Bitch, "And you can run/ your little mouth all day/ but the hand of God/ just smacked you back into yesterday."
- "We're Going to Be Friends" by The White Stripes sounds like a subversion when listened to, but transcriptions of the lyrics show the Title Drop.
- Big Time Rush has a song called "Big Time Rush"
- Done punstastically by Slade in their biggest hit "Merry Xmas Everybody":
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Do you ride on down the hillside in a buggy you have made |
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- The first hit of Brazilian band Os Paralamas do Sucesso had the lyric "The Paralamas do Sucesso are going to play in the capital..."
- The extended intro to the music video of Eurythmics' "Would I Lie to You?" drops the phrase, "Be yourself tonight", which is the title of the album the song comes from.