Redundancy / Music

• Austin Lounge Lizards has a song called "Big Rio Grande River" made up of redundancies.
  In the pass they call El Paso back in 1921
  We saddled up and took a ride and ate a picnic lunch outside
  Beneath the firey inferno of a hot August sun
  Alone with me unchaperoned, a local Texas miss
  Yes lovely Linda was the girl, her brilliance brightened up my world
  While I was serving sadly at the fort that’s known as Bliss.
  We viewed a scenic vista in the valley far below
  We ate cheese quesadillas flanked by fragrant beef fajitas
  The insurgents were revolting in the streets of Mexico
  Suddenly to my surprise a sound came from my rear
  It was seventeen armed gunmen and plus one lone mounted horseman
  Who softly whispered, “Por favor, I’ll take the food and beer
  
  By sunrise it had dawned on me, she’d run off with the great Cabrito Kid
  His white mare, Caballo Blanca, would brave for him the blazing flames of hell
  And after each encounter, he would call his horse and mount her
  And they’d rear off with a stirring grito yell
  His gold tooth flashing in the sun, his song forever endless in my head
  
  Big Rio Grande River, it flows down to the sea
  Bringing back my memories of the past
  High up on Table Mesa, I feel her nearness close to me
  As the evening sun sets in the west
  
  The years have passed and gone, I’m now a wealthy billionaire
  The butler calls my club by phone, I dine there by myself alone
  And shiver in the coldness of my air-conditioned lair
  Looking back in retrospect, my life’s a trite cliché
  Chapters of past history keep echoing repeatedly
  They all come back except the girl who left and went away
  
  A phone bell rings, it’s Linda’s voice, she coos a warm hello (hello, hello, hello)
  Now I am thinking pensively, how we could live expensively
  So we arrange to meet up on the first floor down below
  As we leave the ATM machine she steps aside
  I hear, “Por favor, I’ll take the cash,” I turn and see a gold tooth flash
  Now side by side by side we sing together as we ride
  
  Big Rio Grande River, it flows down to the sea
  Bringing back my memories of the past
  High up on Table Mesa, I feel her nearness close to me
  As the evening sun sets
  As the evening sun sets
  As the evening sun sets in the west.
• I'M GONNA HAVE A HOUSE PARTY IN MY HOUSE
• An English post-punk group exists called 'The The'.
• Manowar's Dawn of Battle:
  I bring death and destruction
  to all that I now kill!
• "Weird Al" Yankovic:
  Then we drive to the drive-thru!
  Heading off to the drive-thru!
  We're approaching the drive-thru!
  Getting close to the drive-thru!
  Almost there at the drive-thru!
  Now we're here at the drive thru!
  Here in line at the drive-thru!
  Did I mention the drive-thru?
  • Of course, that's just a slight exaggeration of how repetitive R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet can get:
    He walks up to the closet
    He goes up to the closet
    Now he's at the closet
    Damn, he's opening the closet...
  • There's also his parody of George Harrison's "(Got my Mind) Set On You", which was titled "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long". A repetitive song about how a repetitive song is repetitive.
    • "Pleeeeeease don't be long, please don't you be very long, please don't be long...don't be long, don't be looooong, don't be long..."
  • Al name-checks a slew of Pokémon in "Polkamon". He mentions Ditto twice.
• "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight!" from the band Spın̈al Tap. First seen in the movie This is Spın̈al Tap, which was about a band named Spın̈al Tap and included this song, which was named "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight!".
  • This song may actually have a real-life parody target in 1979's "Rock You Tonight" by British heavy metal band Marseille, phrased just slightly differently:
  Tonight
  I'm gonna rock you tonight!
  • There are at least three redundancies in the lyrics of their song The Majesty of Rock:
    It's all around us and it's everywhere (...)
    And it feels so real you can feel the feeling! (...)
    The more it stays the same, the less it changes!
• Alestorm's Mexico sneaks one in at the start:
  When the quest is over and the battle's won...
  ...there's a land far to the sound where we go to have some fun!
  The wenches, they are plenty! The alcohol is free!
  The party lasts all through the night and the alcohol is free!
• Seminal punk rockers Ramones love this concept, which apparently come both from their influences in stripped-down, repetitive 60s garage rock as well as in how frontman/songwriter Joey Ramone had a real-life obsessive desire to repeat things.
  • Their tune "Beat on the Brat" from their massively influential self-titled debut Ramones is a great example:
    Beat on the brat!
    Beat on the brat!
    Beat on the brat with a baseball bat!
    Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Uh-oh!
    What can you do?
    What can you do?
    With a brat like that always on your back
    What can you do? (Lose?)
  • That's literally the entire song.
• "I love college, I love drinking, I love women, and I love college!"
  • Which is Asher Roth's "I Love College".
• Willy DeVille's Storybook Love for The Princess Bride.
  My love is like a storybook story.
  But it's as real as the feelings I feel.
  My love is like a storybook story.
  But it's as real as the feelings I feel;
  it's as real as the feelings I feel.
• For that matter, Mink DeVille (the band that the aforementioned DeVille was in before he went solo and dropped the 'Mink'), touched on the same sort of thing before, including in his Signature Song "Spanish Stroll":
  Thinking that you’re such a lady killer
  Think you’re so slick!
  Alright!
• Dragonforce—Through the Fire and Flames.
• Dir en grey—Kodoku ni Shisu, Yue ni Kodoku (I will die in loneliness, because I'm lonely)
• The title song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair:
  It's dollars to doughnuts that our State Fair
  Is the best State Fair in our state!
  • While intended to be humorous, this is partially justified in that some states did in fact hold multiple regional "state fairs" in different regions within the state.
  • Not only that, but Illinois, the state which is the State of Illinois, has two State Fairs in different regions within the state.
• Jan Terri's "Losing You" has THREE examples, all of which combine with Captain Obvious and two of which are in one single verse. From the first verse:
  My heart is open like an open book
  And yours is closed.
  • And the entire second verse.
    Remember long walks, sandy beaches, all those swims together?
    We were like a merry-go-round going around in circles
    You said we'll always be together
    But you weren't telling the truth
    You were telling lies!
• Several Nirvana songs. "Aneurysm" from Incesticide is a good example.
• "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton has the line:
  I'll probably be some kind of scientist
  Building inventions in my space lab in space
• Moonlight Shadow. "Four AM in the morning..."
  • Eminem: It's 3 a.m. in the morning...
  • "Restless" by electronic music producer Slips & Slurs: It's 5 a.m. in the morning...
• During the narrated section in the middle of Rhapsodys Sacred Power of Raging Winds:
  Vankar: Son...you are a betrayer...you have betrayed me!
• Iron Maiden's "Mother of Mercy". "I'll die a lonely death, of that I'm certain of."
• "The Drugs Song" by Amateur Transplants is a List Song which pays homage to Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" with drugs in place of elements. Many of the drugs are listed twice, either by their proprietary name and generic name, their slang name (amphetamine and speed) or, in the case of lithium, simply by the same word on two occasions.
• Any Other World by Mika has "I tried to live alone, but lonely is so lonely alone."
• "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson features the line "They're American planes, made in America".
  • However, if you encounter an American Fokker, it will be an American (owned) plane made in the Netherlands.
• An example is in the Elton John song "Love Lies Bleeding" by Elton John which contains the lines:
  I wonder if those changes have left a scar on you
  Like all the burning hoops of fire that you and I passed through
  • Well, a burning ring can burn from having eaten a good bunch of jalapeno peppers the night before; it's not actually on fire, so the redundancy isn't. Maybe he had something like that in mind, but remembered in time that that line was already taken.
  • It should be noted that this is arguably an homage to Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," itself an eminently worthy example of this trope. Many have joked that it would make a perfect Preparation H commercial.
  I fell into a burning ring of fire
  I went down, down, down and the flames went higher
  And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
  The ring of fire
• No Air by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown has this.
  So how, do you expect me, to live alone with just me?
• Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. Number nine...
• "Fatal Tragedy" by Dream Theater, also in its lyrics.
• The Good Old Hockey Game by Stompin' Tom Conners:
  Oh! The good old hockey game
  Is the best game you can name;
  And the best game you can name,
  Is the good old Hockey game!
• Rock songs about the road are pretty redundant, and Tenacious D's song "The Road" exaggerates this for humorous effect:
  The road is fuckin' hard,
  It's also really fuckin' tough,
  There's no question that,
  It don't take no guff...
• Tina Turner: "You're simply the best. Better than all the rest."
• Disturbed: Their song The Curse gives us the line
  No hope for the hopeless
• Queensrÿche: "It just started to hit me like a two-ton... heavy thing."
• Erasure's "Always" opens with: "Open your eyes I see, your eyes are open."
• KidCudi: "The lonely loner seems to free his mind at night..." Not technically redundant as being alone doesn't mean being lonely and vice versa, but it still sounds a little redundant when you listen to it.
  • Makes more sense in the original version, in which a lonely stoner frees his mind at night.
• "Blackbirds" by Linkin Park: "I'm alone, on my own..."
• Rick Astley hated doing music videos because "they're too repetitive" and "tend to repeat themselves." See the source here.
• "Disarm" by The Smashing Pumpkins: "What I choose is my choice."
• "Small Town" by John Mellencamp: "I cannot forget from where it is that I come from."
• "Body and Soul" by The Manhattan Transfer: "That melodic melody."
• Coheed and Cambria and "Apollo I: The Writing Writer".
• "Not Afraid" by Eminem: "I'ma be what I set out to be, without a doubt undoubtedly!"
• "World's Greatest Mom in the World" by Parry Gripp.
• In Supersonik Elektronik there's "Above us, there is nothing above, but the stars...above!"
• Eenie Meenie by Sean Kingston and Justin Bieber features the line "She's indecisive, she can't decide"
• Tim Minchin's "Good Book": "the good book is a book, and it is good, and it's a book."
• Kerry Livgren's "The Traveler" opens with "I began at the beginning..." and a later verse begins with "Now I have seen the far horizon, at the edge of what is known."
• "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."
• Dr. Dre, "Nuthin' but a G Thang"
  Never let me slip, cause if I slip then I'm slipping
• Mitch Benn's List Song of everything that's awesome about The BBC has the "I Like X" variant (and he really does):
  You And Me, Me And You,
  Monty Python, Doctor Who!
  • Then later:
  Nationwide, Mr. Men,
  Doctor Who again,
  Radio 1, Radio 2,
  Did I mention Doctor Who?
• Drake's "Forever" contains the verse "lil Wayne, that's what they gotta say or mention"
• King Crimson in "Indiscipline" sorta subverts this: "I repeat myself when under stress; I repeat myself when under stress; I repeat myself when under stress . . ."
• Not unlike Talking Heads in "Once in a Lifetime": "Same as it ever was; same as it ever was; same as it ever was; same as it ever was."
• "If you didn't know that, well baby, now you know now."
• From "Why Can't This Be Love?": "Only time will tell if we stand the test of time."
• The first verse of "Meet James Ensor" by They Might Be Giants mentions "He lived with his mother / and the torments of Christ". The second verse remarks "He lived with his mother / and repeated himself".
  • "Older" has the lyrics "Time... is marching on / And time... is still marching on"
• Lady Gaga's "Born this way" music video has this:
  Thus began the beginning of the new race.
• The band "The Los Hermanos Brothers." (If you translate the Spanish, the name works out to "The The Brothers Brothers.")
• Dutch singer Caro Emerald has an album titled "Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor".
• Phish unites this with Captain Obvious:
  We've got cymbals
  'Cause we've got a band
  We've got cymbals in the band
• Judas Priest's "Painkiller" contains the following lines:
  Faster than a bullet
  Terrifying scream
  Enraged and full of anger
  He's half man and half machine
• George Thorogood and the Destroyers:
  I drink alone
  With nobody else
  And you know when I drink alone
  I prefer to be by myself
• U2's "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of". Just the song title itself.
• Everclear's "I Will Buy You A New Life":
  I will buy you a new car
  Perfect shiny and new
• Los Amigos Invisibles' "Ponerte En Cuatro":
  ¡Te quito la vida y te mato! (I take your life away and kill you!)
• Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?":
  A man came up to me and asked me
  What the time was that was on my watch
• America's "A Horse With No Name":
  The heat was hot
• The Beach Boys' "Be True To Your School":
  I got a letterman's sweater
  With a letter in front
• "T.N.T." by AC/DC:
  I'm dirty, mean and mighty unclean
• The Rolling Stones' "Let It Bleed":
  But you knifed me in my dirty filthy basement
• Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden made a song with lots of jokes about aging, including:
  Barry:My short-term memory's going
  And I'll tell you somethin' else
  My short-term memory's going
  And I'll tell you somethin' else
  Ronnie: His short-term memory is going
  And he'll tell you somethin' else
  Barry: (You can see where this is going, can't you?)
  My short-term memory is going
  And I'll tell you somethin' else.
• Spartan Warrior's "Last Man Standing"
  I'll be the last man standing here
  I'll still be standing strong
  The last man standing
  I'll be the only one
• The B-52s - "There's a moon in the sky - it's called The Moon!"
• The Christmas carol "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". "Herald" and "Angel" both mean the same thing, messenger.
• The Spanish Christmas carol "Salve, Reina y Madre" (Hail, Queen and Mother") mentions "la nieve fría" (the cold snow).
• The Mississippi Sheiks song "Fingering with Your Fingers".
• Iced Earth do this quite often, often combining it with Narm.
  • Nightmares:
  Nightmares! In The Night!
  • Mystical End
  For the one who shall deceive us is the one - AAAAAH!!!!
  • Reaching The End:
  Now I feel that I've reached the end
  And the end of my quest is close at hand
  What have I done
  I've reached the end
• Stevie Nicks gets into the act:
  Just like the white-wing dove
  Sings a song sounds like she's singing
  • There's also "Crystal" by Buckingham Nicks (later re-recorded by Fleetwood Mac):
    Do you always trust your first initial feeling?
• Lily Allen's "The Fear" begins:
  I wanna be rich
  And I want lots of money
• Bon Jovi's "It's My Life":
  I just wanna live while I'm alive
• The All-American Rejects' "The Wind Blows"
  Late nights when I sit up late,
• Motörhead's "Killed by Death".
• The Who "Face the Face" by Pete Townshend (from his solo album "White City")...now is that played straight or rather playing with? Verbing the noun is not completely redundant.
• In !HERO: The Rock Opera, the name of the One World Order is I.C.O.N., which stands for International Confederation Of Nations.
• Adam Ant's "Something Girls"
  Every girl is a something girl
  Every girl is a something girl
  Every girl is a something girl
  She's got something, she's got something
• The band Math The Band have also played shows under the name Math The Band The Band. Justified because Math The Band and Math The Band The Band are different lineups of the same group: Math The Band is a duo, whereas Math The Band The Band adds four more members, and is therefor more properly a "band".
• The credits to Rascal Flatts' 2014 album Rewind credit the production to "Rascal Flatts and Jay DeMarcus", even though he is one-third of Rascal Flatts.
• From Beastie Boys's "So What'cha Want."
  Well I think I'm losing my mind, this time
  This time I'm losing my mind; that's right
  I said I think I'm losing my mind, this time
  This time, I'm losing my mind
  • The song "Hold It Now, Hit It" contains the lyric, "And I come from Brooklyn 'cause that's where I'm from!"
• Former Soul Coughing lead vocalist Mike Doughty lives this trope in his solo work; many songs repeat a word or two endlessly as part of the hook, while "Year of the Dog" repeats phrases within singular lines:
  And I'm listless and lost and I cry all the time
  Lost, and I cry all the time
  And I felt just the same, though I chuffed off a line
  High, but I felt just the same
• There's an Italian Black Metal band called Necrodeath. "Necro" is the Greek prefix for "death", so their name means "death death".
• "The Only One" Huey Lewis and the News:
  He was not just the only one.
  He was the one and only.
• "Bored" by Blink 182: Life's too short to last long.
• "Send Me An Angel" by Real Life: "Don't tell a lie, don't be false and untrue"
• Madness have a song called "The Return of the Los Palmas 7", or "The Return of the the Palms 7".
• "Black Horse Rider" by Metalite: "Through the flames of burning fire".
• If you look at NateWantsToBattle's Instrumentals on iTunes, you'll see that the tracks have titles like "Mangled (Instrumental) [Instrumental]" and "Misty (Acoustic Instrumental) [Acoustic Instrumental]".
• Steve Perry's "Foolish Heart":
  Feeling that feeling again...
• The Megas: "Metal Dance". Metal Man wants you to know that in his metal cave, full of metal devices that bend to his metal will, he throws metal blades from his metal hands as part of his metal dance.
• Victory: "I'm a hunter hunting you" is not completely redundant, he could hunt someone else...
• Tesla's "2 Late 4 Love" has the opening line: "I can't believe this fucked up world in which we're living in"
• 6ix9ine's "Gooba":
  Are you dumb, stupid, or dumb, huh?
  Play me like a dummy, like bitch, are you dumb?
  Are you dumb, stupid, or dumb, huh?
• "Here's to You" by Ennio Morricone and Joan Baez: The lyrics consist entirely of the same four-line verse repeated eight times, and one of those lines contains a redundancy of its own: "The last and final moment is yours."
• The Wesley Willis song "Rock 'n Roll McDonalds" refers to the titular establishment as "a restaurant where [people] buy food to eat".
• Blind Guardian's "Into the Storm":
  We are following the will of the one
  Through the dark age and into the storm
  And we're following the will of the one
  Through the dark age and into the storm
• Dean Summerwind (not his real name) released the song Parked by the Lake a few years ago...
• "Destination" by Zeehas; 12 Wait (also a possible Lampshade Hanging about how the rest of the song consists of Word Salad Lyrics):
  I'm upset that nobody knows how I feel
  It really bothers me that none of you know how I feel
  Know how I feel
  Nobody ever knows just how I feel
• One line from will.i.am's "T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)" has been subject to mockery due to its redundant, repetitive wording.
  I woke up in the morning, hard like morning wood in the morning
• There are a few albums and singles which iTunes says are by "Nigga & Flex", even though these two stage names refer to the same person.
• Green Day's song "I Was A Teenage Teenager".