Breaking The Fourth Wall / Music

• Lou Bega pulled this off in his CD A Little Bit Of Mambo. With the prelude of him improvising a song from a non-song conversation he has on the 12th track, he explains on the song he's "improvising" that DJs can play this {the song) since it's on their play list.
• Many folk songs directly address the audience in the last verse. "The Creggan White Hare", for example, is a tale about a crafty hare largely told in third person, but the narrator takes charge at the end:
  And now to conclude and to finish my rhyme
  I hope you'll excuse me for wasting your time
  If there's any amongst you in Carrickmore Fair
  Drink a jolly good health to the Creggan white hare
• Britpop/Shoegaze band Lush uses this in their song Hypocrite. "... and maybe you're right, but this is my song"
• On Jimmy Buffett's album Banana Wind, after the last credited song, "False Echoes (Havana 1921)" ends, there's a silent beat, after which you can hear Buffet asking "Ramos, where's the hidden track?" followed by the sounds of an intense search and a lot more comments about not being able to find the "hidden track". After which the song "Tree Top Flyer", the hidden track in question, begins.
• "I'm a cartoon, mate. You'll have a hard time getting anything to stick on me. I don't even have fingerprints."
• The "Too Drunk to Fish" by Ray Stevens ends with Ray catching a piece of the boat that sank halfway through the song and turning abound to look directly at the camera.
• Thenardier seems to do this in Les Misérables when he justifies his scavenging of the dead, singing, "Well, someone's gotta clean 'em up my friends" in "Dog Eats Dog".
• Shadow Gallery does this in their concept album Room V. The main character helps a US Special Forces agent develop the vaccine to a weaponized virus that the New World Order intends to release upon the world, and then forms a six man group to inform the world that an attack is imminent.
  Here we are, we are the band, we've got your marching orders
  It's in the music and the words that we sing
  Sing along, sing out loud, and you'll join the answer
  We will rock with the thunder of a thousand mighty horses
• Karmin duo Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan actively use this trope in their performances, and will do so on IN:DEMAND with Alex James on Bauer, and David Heane on Real Radio
• Pink Floyd's The Wall is a rock opera that combines a mostly regular narrative with fourth-wall-breaking songs addressing the audience directly. In particular, the songs "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh" double as parts of the story (Pink's birth and "dark rebirth", respectively) and as comments on following act (ITF? is the first song, ITF introduces the final act). Note that in the original tour, both songs were performed by a backing band wearing Pink Floyd masks. ITF? goes: "So ya thought ya/might like to go to the show [...] tell me is something eluding you sunshine/is this not what you expected to see [...]." ITF again reminds the audience that they are watching a "surrogate band" and that "Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel".
  
  
  On a lighter note, there is also a backwards message (very popular in those days) embedded in the song "Empty Spaces" stating "[...] Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont... [...]."
• Frank Zappa did this a few times:
  • "Plastic People" on Absolutely Free:
  Watch the Nazis run your town
  Then go home and check yourself
  You think we're singing about someone else?
  'Cause your plastic people, oh baby, now you're such a drag
  • We're Only in It for the Money: "The Idiot Bastard Son" has Word Salad Lyrics until at one point Zappa sings:
  The child will grow and enter a world of liars, and cheaters and people like you
  Who smile and think they know what this is about
  You think you know everything, maybe so
  The song we sing, do you know?
  We're listening...
  • Fillmore East, June 1971: Happens a few times during "Do You Like My New Car?", especially when the girlfriends of the groupie have to have all male names and not only that they are all names of Zappa's band members.
  • Zappa in New York: During "Titties & Beer" the believability of the sketch is briefly interrupted when Zappa receives a note with the question he could call somebody from the audience. He fulfills the request and continues without the background musicians ever skipping a beat. But Zappa then takes the opportunity to crack up his drummer (who plays the Devil in the sketch and wears a mask).
  Zappa: Wait, is that a note for me? Is somebody passing me a note? What does this say ... ? "Frank, please do me a favour, I can't find a brother of mine, I could dig it if you could call him from stage. His name is Dirty Tom Nomads M.C.," signed "Thanks, Bear" or "Bean," I can't tell ... Well, if he's out there ... Dirty Tony De La Nomads M.C. get in touch with Bean or Bear ... ) And as I was sayin'(...)
  • Joe's Garage: During "Cy Borg" Joe complains he cannot pay for the damaged robot because "I gave away all my money to some groovy religious guy two songs ago." Indeed the track where this situation occured on the record is "A Token Of My Extreme", two tracks before "Cyborg".
• Eminem has sketches like these on all his albums. On The Marshall Matters LP he whispers in Jeff Bass' ear, while Bass says it to the audience:
  Slim Shady does not care what you think
  Upon purchasing this album you've just kissed his ass
• The Beatles: "Good Night" on The White Album has Ringo say "goodnight, everybody, everybody everywhere", as if he talks to all the listeners worldwide.
  • "Only a Northern Song" from the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack opens with the line "If you're listening to this song, you may think the chords are going wrong". Each verse from the song opens in a similar way.
• The White Stripes on Elephant: Jack White and Holly Golightly sing a duet in "Well, It's True That We Love One Another" and bicker how they love or don't love one another, when which Meg sings: "Will the two of you cut it out/ and tell 'em [the audience] what it's really all about?"
• The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis: In the synopsis of the album included in the liner notes, Rael tells readers to "Keep your fingers out of my eye." The front cover is a triptych of images depicting Rael - when the listener opens up the record sleeve to read the liner notes, they might be holding it in such a way that their finger is in the "eye" of the leftmost portrait.
• Spike Jones loved this trope too. In his parody of "Ghost Riders In The Sky" one of the vocalists asks: "When do I come in, partner?", whereupon the other replies: "In this song it don't matter, partner, go ahead!"
• Happens a few times during Jean-Michel Jarre concert videos, whether it's Charlotte Rampling smiling right into the camera while taking photographs of her husband on stage in Paris La Défense (you might think that an actress like her should know better) or a camera lens being wiped dry due to the rainfall of Destination Docklands.
• Mungo Jerry does this in their hit "In the Summertime." Most of what they want you to "sing along with us" is just a bunch of scatting, but still.
• Bo Diddley's "You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover" has Diddley step away from the lyrics to admonish the listener for having their radio turned down too low: "Turn it up!"
• Bob Luman's country-western song "Let's Think About Living" spoofs/gently criticizes the early-1960s trend of music with depressing themes such as death. After listing a few examples by the likes of Marty Robbins, Patti Page and the Everly Brothers, Luman warns the listener: "If we keep on losing our singers like that, I'll be the only one you can buy!" Doubles as one of the few notable examples of a singer of the era acknowledging in a song lyric the fact that people buy the music.
• Coin Locker Kid's Tinker creek. from The Salmon of Doubt breaks the fourth wall on three different levels.
  • First with the album:
  Yeah, just listening to music mostly
  Oh yeah, what is it again? That album by that guy, uh, the one about the fish or whatever
  Yeah that's it
  • Then with Tinker creek. itself:
  I'm on like the sixth track I think. I stopped it there. It's not even a song it's like just voices talking or something
  • And finally with one of the characters within becoming self-aware:
  Like my words and actions aren't even my own. Like a robot. Like a text-to-speech program on a computer and all of my everything are just command prompts input into my being.
• Baccara's "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie":
  No sir
  I don't feel very much like talking
  No, neither walking
  You wanna know if I can dance
  
  Yes sir
  Already told you in the first verse
  And in the chorus
  But I will give you one more chance
• 21 Savage does this on the song "Don't come out the house" After he performs the hook for the first time, he starts to whisper. After a while you think he is gonna do this the entire time. He then acknowledges this by then saying "Y'all really thought I was gonna whisper the whole time" as the beat comes back in and he changes his entire delivery and flow
• Mori Calliope's MV for The Grim Reaper Is A Live-Streamer ends with Takanashi Kiara getting in a cameo in the form of a DM remarking "I know you're at the end of the song! ANSWER ME!!!"

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