Taylor Swift demonstrates three variations of this trope.
An Album Trope.
Self-Referential Track Placement is when the title of a song alludes or corresponds to the track's placement on the album.
The most basic version of this is when a song with a Numerical Title like "8" or "Fifteen" is placed as track #8 or 15.
In subtler instances, a track with a name that suggests a certain number—through mentioning a specific month or day or alluding to a Numerological Motif—will be placed at the matching track number.
Subtrope of Visual Title Drop, Painting the Medium, Stealth Pun, and Double-Meaning Title. May overlap with Letters 2 Numbers, Trivial Title, or Arc Number. Sister trope to Chronological Album Title, when the album's name makes reference to its placement in the artist's discography. See also Numerical Theme Naming, Justified Title, Title Drop Chapter, and Unusual Chapter Numbers.
The tendency for the last song on an album to be called something like "The End" is covered by Album Closure.
Examples:
Rock- The Bangles' third album begins with "Manic Monday," about the first day of the week.
- On Beatles for Sale, the song "Eight Days a Week" is track #8.
- The second track on Blur's eponymous album is simply called "Song 2." (All the other tracks have normal names.)
- Appropriately enough, the song ended up at #2 in Triple J's Hottest 100 behind The Whitlams' "No Aphrodisiac", having been the favourite to take out the #1 spot.
- And then it was track #2 on their 2000 Greatest Hits Album Blur: The Best Of.
- Every song on 22, A Million by Bon Iver is a random number with no correlation to the tracklist, except for "8 (circle)" which is track #8.
- The first song on Built to Spill's first album is called "The First Song".
- The last song on Emmerdale by The Cardigans is titled "Last Song." Additionally, the last song on Life is titled "Closing Time."
- "Seven Bridges Road" by The Eagles appears as the seventh track on Eagles Live.
- The Grates' song "Welcome to the Middle" is placed exactly in the middle of their album Secret Rituals, at track 6 out of 11.
- Jhariah:
- A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO FAKING YOUR DEATH has "PRESSURE BOMB 3?!?!" as the 3rd track.
- The fourth track on The Great Tale Of How I Ruined It All is "These 4 Walls".
- McFly: The Title Track of the album Room on the 3rd Floor is track #3.
- My Chemical Romance: The Black Parade album plays with this — the first track is "The End." Which is appropriate, because The Black Parade is a concept album about someone coming to terms with their impending death. The last song on the album, "Famous Last Words," is a more straightforward example.
- The Sinéad O'Connor song "Three Babies" is track #3 on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got.
- "All Mirrors" by Angel Olsen explores duality and mirroring and is placed at track #2 on its album.
- The PVRIS song "Half," about Double Consciousness, is track #2.
- Track 1 on Regurgitator's second EP New is called "Track 1".
- Rush's album Fly by Night finishes on the track "In the End".
- The last song on Sleater-Kinney's self-titled debut is called "The Last Song".
- Subverted for "Farewell Transmission" by Songs: Ohia, which is the opening track on The Magnolia Electric Co..
- Tally Hall's debut album has a brief interlude simply titled "13" as the 13th track (which also happens to be 13 seconds long!)
- The third track on the first album by They Might Be Giants is called "Number Three" and explicitly says in the lyrics that it was the third song written.
- The Twenty One Pilots song "Nico and the Niners" is the ninth track on Trench.
- The Velvet Teen's debut EP Comasynthesis has "Penning the Penultimate" as the second-to-last track. It's also the penultimate track on their compilation Plus Minus Equals, which also has "Milo 7" as track 7.
Pop
- The first song on Caroline Polachek's album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is titled "Welcome To My Island."
- Charli XCX's song "Track 10" is, expectedly, track #10 on Pop 2.
- Christine and the Queens's song "5 dollars" is placed at track #5 on Chris.
- Track #8 on Billie Eilish's debut album is called "8." It is sung from the perspective of her eight-year-old self.
- Likewise, the album's final track is titled "goodbye".
- Taylor Swift:
- Red: Track #13 is titled "The Lucky One," in reference to the 13 Is Unlucky trope. (13 is Swift's personal lucky number, and the track explores the idea of luck and who's really lucky in the end.)
- Three of the tracks on folklore are arranged in numerological order. Track #1 is called "the 1," track #7 is called "seven," and track #8 is called "august" (August being the eighth month of the year).
- Midnights: Would've, Could've, Should've" has the number motif of 19: Being the age of the singer when she was in the abusive romance with the older man; the age that ties the song to the Speak Now romance and being track #19 on the 3 am edition.
- The final track in the standard edition of 1989 (Taylor's Version) is called "Is It Over Now?"
- Half of Scott Walker's album Climate of Hunter is this: the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh tracks are respectively titled "Track Three", "Track Five", "Track Six" and "Track Seven".
Electronic
- The ninth track of Aviators' album Halfwolf is titled "Number Nine".
- The last track of Diorama's album Even The Devil Doesn't Care is titled "Over."
- The opening interlude on FKA twigs's album LP1 is titled "Preface."
- The first song on Halfaxa by Grimes is an interlude titled "Outer" (the first track being the "outermost" track).
- "Spule 4" is the fourth track on Kraftwerk 2.
- Lemon Jelly take it a stage further with "Experiment #6" from Lost Horizons. Not only is it track #6 but it contains spoken timings that correlate exactly to the running time of the track itself.
- Yellow Magic Orchestra's album Technodelic closes with a song called "Epilogue".
Metal
- Dream Theater's "Octavarium", from its namesake album, is the eighth track, closing the whole album and its theme of fives and eights.
- The last song of Five Finger Death Punch's album Afterlife is titled "The End."
- The Slipknot song "Three Nil" is the third track on Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses).
Rap
- Devo Spice's Herp Derp Ya Don't Sterp
ends with "The Last Song on the Album".
- "Track 10" is indeed track 10 on 5 Sparrows for 2 Cents by the Procussions. For bonus points, the lyrics consist solely of variations on "This is track number ten!"
- Eminem's first three major label albums each have an Anti-Love Song featuring Dina Rae as Track 13, referencing Eminem's idea of women being bad luck.
Soundtrack
- Hiroyuki Sawano uses this to an incredibly frustrating extent for Attack on Titan. Some tracks have naming schemes such as "進撃 gt20130218 巨人", which effectively translates to: "Attack, primary instrumentation, date of production/composition/completion, Titan." So in the example given, the theme's name is: "Attack on Titan track, primary instrumentation is acoustic guitar, dated February 18, 2013." What stage of production is listed in the track titles can only be assumed, as the dates given generally precede the first airing of the season the track is used in by a matter of months.
