Stuck for songwriting inspiration? Sometimes, just singing about your lack of inspiration or what it's like trying to write a song might do the trick. Three Dog Night did this with the song, "Our B Side," asking the audience in tongue-in-cheek fashion, "Our B side, are you hummin' it?" The Beats took a similar approach in "Just Another Pop Song." Joe Jackson had perhaps the most clever take on this with his tune, "Hit Single." Rather than just singing, "I'm a hit single," Jackson acknowledges that a lot of us have short attention spans, at least part of the time. "...Please, not the whole damn album. Nobody has that much time," is one of anyone's most refreshingly frank songwriting admissions.
You can't do it often, but sometimes, a song about how challenging it is to come up with a song is the answer--at least for contractual purposes.
