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Sometimes the best part of a song is hearing another song hiding inside it.
It might be a familiar lyric, a melody you haven’t heard in years, or a title slipped into a verse so naturally that you almost miss it. And then you find yourself thinking, Wait. I know that song.
I’ve always enjoyed trivia — any trivia, really, but especially
One of the things I love about
And we’ve been collecting those memories for generations. From records and eight-tracks to cassettes, CDs, iPods, and streaming, the ways we listen have changed dramatically. But regardless of the method or the media, the
That’s part of what makes songs that reference other songs so interesting. Sometimes, artists pay tribute to the
When I started exploring these songs, I expected a fun musical scavenger hunt and some interesting
We’ll have some fun testing our musical memories along the way. But I hope you’ll find just as I did that there’s a lot more here than trivia.
Sweet Soul Music — Arthur Conley (1967)
Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul
But there’s another musical reference here, and it’s one that caught my attention for a completely different reason.
Listen to the opening instrumental figure. Does it sound familiar? It’s borrowed from Elmer Bernstein’s theme for the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven.
Now, that’s
It’s one of my favorite discoveries in this playlist — a film score turning up in a song celebrating soul singers. The song also includes references to the following:
- “Going to a Go-Go” by the Miracles
- “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing” by Lou Rawls
- “Hold On, I’m Comin'” by Sam & Dave
- “Mustang Sally” by Wilson Pickett
- “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” by Otis Redding.
Explore Elmer Bernstein’s discography
Listen to The Magnificent Seven original motion picture soundtrack
On the Radio — Regina Spektor (2006)
Regina Spektor’s “On the Radio” is one of those songs that sounds almost as though she’s thinking out loud. It’s clever, a little quirky, and full of unexpected turns.
One of those turns involves Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain.” Spektor imagines the song playing on the radio, complete with its famously long guitar solo and a DJ who’s fallen asleep.
It’s such a funny image, especially if you remember just how enormous “November Rain” felt when it was released. The song, the video, the guitar solos — nothing about it was understated.
And Spektor doesn’t need to play a note of it. Just mentioning the song brings the whole thing back.
And the Radio Played — Lady A (2013)
Lady A’s “And the Radio Played,” from the deluxe edition of Golden, is practically a trip through country radio history. And this one brings back quite a few memories for me.
I didn’t grow up listening to much country
Later, I worked in a school office where the secretary loved country
That’s one of the things I enjoy about this Lady A song. It doesn’t just mention familiar country hits. It reminds me of when those songs became familiar to me.
And I love the lyric video that accompanies the song. As Lady A sings the references, the video shows the album artwork for the songs they’re mentioning.
For me, this song is a perfect example of
2002 — Anne-Marie (2018)
Anne-Marie’s “2002” takes us back to singing along with friends, knowing every word, and not necessarily caring whether we were getting all the lyrics right.
Britney Spears, *NSYNC, Nelly, and Jay-Z all find their way into the song. It’s practically a collection of pop-radio memories.
But there’s a little trick hiding in those references.
The song is called “2002,” although not every song it mentions had been released by then.
Of course, that’s probably how our memories work anyway. I don’t think most of us file our favorite songs away in perfectly chronological order. We remember the people we sang them with, the places we heard them, and how we felt at the time.
Timeless — Rob Thomas (2019)
Rob Thomas’s “Timeless” is another song that has fun with familiar musical references, especially songs from the 1980s.
In a 2019 interview, Thomas talked about writing the song with Butch Walker, who had incorporated references to David Bowie’s “Modern Love” and Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” They continued exploring the idea, creating a song that could be enjoyed even by listeners who didn’t recognize all the musical connections.
And did you hear the nod to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” in there?
Thomas mentioned that his young niece liked the song without knowing the references. I love that. The
Take Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” for example. Many people associate it with Whitney, even though Dolly Parton wrote it and recorded it years earlier. We talked about that remarkable connection in The Songs Dolly Gave Us.
That brings us to another famous recording with a songwriter you might not expect.
90’s Country — Walker Hayes (2018)
Walker Hayes apparently decided that mentioning one or two familiar country songs wasn’t nearly enough.
“90’s Country” includes references to 22 country hits.
If you listened to country radio during the 1990s, this is quite a workout for your musical memory. Some references are immediately recognizable; others go by so quickly that you barely have time to identify one before the next arrives.
It’s exactly the kind of song that makes me want to stop, back it up — or as we did back in the day, rewind — and listen again.
And here’s my favorite part: Walker Hayes tried to name all 22 songs himself.
Watch Walker Hayes try to name all 22 references
I love that even the person singing the references has to think about them!
Take Me Home Tonight — Eddie Money (1986)
Some songs mention an older hit. Eddie Money went one better: he invited someone from the original recording to sing on his.
Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes joins Money on “Take Me Home Tonight,” singing the familiar “Be My Baby” refrain. Of course, Ronnie had sung the original with the Ronettes back in 1963.
I love hearing that connection between two eras. It’s not somebody imitating an old record. It’s one of the voices that made the original famous, returning more than twenty years later.
Listen to the Ronettes’ original “Be My Baby”
A Praise Chorus — Jimmy Eat World (2001)
Jimmy Eat World’s “A Praise Chorus” takes a different approach. Instead of simply dropping a song title into a lyric, it builds a whole section around familiar musical phrases.
Davey von Bohlen of the Promise Ring contributes vocals to the overlapping references. The result feels a little like everybody singing along to the radio at once — except that everybody seems to have chosen a different song.
If you’ve ever been on a bus full of band students, you can probably imagine how I can relate to that.
Veni Vidi Vici — Madonna featuring Nas (2015)
Madonna has an advantage over most artists when it comes to referencing familiar songs: she has an enormous catalog of her own hits to choose from.
In “Veni Vidi Vici,” she uses those songs to tell parts of her own story.
Content advisory: This recording contains explicit language.
References to “Like a Virgin,” “Express Yourself,” “Vogue,” and “Ray of Light” become markers along the way.
And that gives me an excuse to indulge one of my favorite kinds of
My bestie gets a kick out of my ability to remember what year a song was popular. I can’t always remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but play a few seconds of a song from the ’80s or ’90s, and there’s a pretty good chance I can tell you what year it was on the radio.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t know if that’s a particularly useful skill for much, but it certainly comes in handy when we’re talking about Madonna. Her career spans so many different eras that her songs practically form a timeline.
And while I was thinking about Madonna’s different eras, I recalled some Madonna trivia.
Remember MTV’s “Make My Video” Contest?
In 1986, MTV invited viewers to create their own videos for Madonna’s “True Blue.”
The winning video was made by Angel Gracia and Cliff Guest. And here’s the part I find especially interesting: Madonna wasn’t even in it.
The winning entry interpreted her song without featuring the artist herself.
Think about how unusual that was, especially at a time when the
We explored that changing relationship between
Read Madonna’s account of the “True Blue” contest
It’s one of those stories that makes me appreciate just how much
Almost (Sweet Music) — Hozier (2019)
We’ve heard plenty of songs that use musical references to celebrate other artists or bring back familiar memories. But sometimes those references serve another purpose. They help tell a story about something we’re feeling, even when the
There’s something irresistible about Hozier’s “Almost (Sweet
But listen a little more closely, and there’s another story unfolding underneath all that joyful
Hozier weaves references to jazz greats and familiar recordings into a song about finding your way back to yourself after a relationship has ended. The
That contrast is what makes the song so interesting to me. It sounds happy, but there’s a melancholy running through it. The narrator is beginning to feel like himself again, yet he still sees reminders of a former love in someone new.
And I love the story behind the title.
In his commentary on Wasteland, Baby!, Hozier explained that he was having a little fun at his own expense. After referencing so many wonderful jazz songs, he thought it was appropriate to describe his own contribution as “almost sweet
That’s such a charming bit of modesty. He’s surrounded his song with references to musical greatness and then playfully suggests that his recording doesn’t quite belong in the same company.
Read Hozier’s album commentary
I’d argue that it holds its own quite nicely.
Meet the Jazz Legends
Duke Ellington — follow the swing
Ellington is named in Hozier’s lyrics. Start with “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, performed by his orchestra.
John Coltrane — A Love Supreme
Hozier folds this title into his story of romantic distance. Coltrane’s 1965 album follows a spiritual journey in four movements.
This isn’t another quiz. It’s an invitation to follow the references back to the
For revisiting favorite records, with USB recording for making digital copies.
For listening to old cassettes and converting them to MP3.
A pair of wireless speakers for listening at home.
For taking the music along, with Active Noise Cancellation and a wireless charging case.
Song for Another Time — Old Dominion (2016)
Old Dominion’s “Song for Another Time” also packs a remarkable number of familiar songs into one recording. The band has identified 20 references, and there’s a breakdown available for anyone who wants to try to catch them all.
The musical references aren’t there just to test our memories. They bring back more than familiar songs. Sometimes, they bring back entire moments in our lives — moments we’d love to hold on to just a little longer.
The band shared a breakdown of the songs it mentions, and it’s worth reading after you’ve listened and tried to identify them yourself.
Explore the 20 references in “Song for Another Time”
Not Strong Enough — boygenius (2023)
I often fall in love with the sound of a song before I really start paying attention to the lyrics. Sometimes, it’s the voices. Sometimes, it’s the arrangement. Sometimes, I just know I want to hear it again.
“Not Strong Enough” was one of those songs for me.
The reference to The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” is easy to miss when you’re caught up in the sound of the recording. And that’s part of what I find interesting about it. Sometimes a familiar title becomes part of something much more complicated.
The more I listen to this song, the more I appreciate the contrast between the energy of the
The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm) — Amy Grant (2026)
I’ve loved Amy Grant’s
But I don’t think I was prepared for how emotional “The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)” would make me.
There’s quite a story behind this song, beginning with the woman who wrote it.
Sandy Emory Lawrence, a longtime friend of Amy’s, began working on the song years before it was recorded. She was thinking about unrest, the hopes and divisions of the 1960s, and what had happened to some of those ideals.
Amy has said the writing process stretched across fifteen years, but the song didn’t find its ultimate direction until after the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
That’s a long time for a song to find its way.
And then there’s Amy’s own story. In 2022, she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident. Her recovery was difficult. She struggled with her memory, balance, and rhythm, and even remembering lyrics she’d sung for decades became a challenge.
She eventually found her way back to performing and recording, but it wasn’t as simple as picking up where she’d left off. Knowing that history makes hearing her sing this song even more meaningful.
The title refers to Max Yasgur‘s farm, the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival. The song recalls the
I’ve listened to this song on repeat, and it makes me emotional every time. For a while, I couldn’t quite figure out why. Part of it, I’m sure, is knowing what Amy Grant has been through and hearing her sing again. Part of it is the story of a song that took fifteen years to finish.
But I finally realized that what truly affects me is what I believe the song is saying.
When I think about the events of January 6, 2021, it saddens me that — no matter which side of the political aisle we’re on — it seems that we’ve somehow lost our way. And when I hear Amy singing about the hopes of an earlier generation, I wonder how we drifted so far from what we once believed we could accomplish together.
The Woodstock generation certainly didn’t have everything figured out. Far from it. Those were turbulent, divided years, too. But their
I’ve seen this happen during my lifetime, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our nation.
President Bush’s memorable words from that evening’s address held true: Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
I remember how Americans came together after 9/11, even in the midst of so much devastation, disbelief, and heartbreak. And remembering that gives me hope that we can find our way back to that sense of unity again.
I think that’s why this song affects me so deeply. For me, “The Sixth of January” is a story of resilience on several levels: a songwriter who spent fifteen years finding the right words, Amy finding her way back to
But if there’s one thing these stories remind me, it’s that finding our way takes time. Sometimes much longer than we’d like. And I can’t help hoping and praying that we haven’t lost the ability to imagine something better — or the resilience and resolve to make it happen.
Just to Hear a Song I Know
When I started putting this playlist together, I thought it would be fun to find songs that mentioned other songs. And it was. I love the little thrill of recognizing a lyric, remembering who recorded something, or figuring out what year a song was popular.
But I didn’t expect all the stories we’d find along the way.
Who would have thought a soul classic would take me back to playing The Magnificent Seven in the stands at football games? Or that a song full of jazz references would turn out to be about trying to get over someone? We found songwriters whose names weren’t always the ones we associated with their biggest hits, artists who brought older
Some of those connections made me laugh. Some sent me looking for recordings I hadn’t heard in years. And one of them made me cry even before I quite understood why.
I suppose that’s part of what I love about
Maybe remembering those songs is one way to remember what matters.
And that’s not a trivial pursuit.
