I Won't Tell 'Em Your Name
Is it just me or do bands seem to be running out of good names to use?
When I was younger, I used to imagine I was going to start a band when I grew up, you know, with all the music I didn't know how to sing or instruments I didn't know how to play. Sure, you laugh now, but I'm not the only little girl who dared to dream so big. Just look how things worked out for Britney Spears.
Anyway, I still had to have a fake name to go with my fake dreams. When I was still in my, "little girl, Barbie and the Rockers phase", I thought the coolest name yet to be used had to be Crystal Clear. Remember, this was when girl bands like The Bangles and The Go Go's were all the rage. For the life of me, I just could not understand why someone hadn't snatched that sucker up by then.
As I got older and grunge rock became more of the focus, my prime band name choice became to shift, too. Suddenly one word titles oozed a certain degree of sophistication to me. That's when I settled upon Corduroy. In a space time continuum sense I still insist they both could work. I honestly don't know when it became so complicated.
Years ago, band naming, not unlike baby naming, used to be simple. Pretty much the word "The" followed by virtually any other word worked best the first time and really, every time.
There was the random objects phase. The Crystals. The Four Tops. The Five Satins. The Platters. You catch the drift or better yet, The Drifters.
The early sixties ushered in the "The" wave and rode it to the next level, tagging on pretty much any animal they could think of. The Byrds. The Yardbirds. The Monkees. Even The Beatles technically fell into this category although they really were a cross breed of animals meets play on words. You know, like The Wonders, only instead of Won-ders, it will be One-ders. Hell, even The Animals were a band once, too.
Meanwhile, the late sixties brought with it a time period of exploration and experimentation. Out of this we got some funky names like Led Zeppelin, Credence Clearwater Revival and Muddy Waters. But we also got some bland, looking around the room and calling out random things in an "I Love Lamp" like fashion seemed more appropriate. Names that come to mind here include Bread, Cream, Traffic, The Doors, The Who, Gerry and The Pacemakers and the ultimate lack of originality name of all time, The Band. Presumptuous or just plain dumb? You be the judge.
The eighties was a period of indulgence so it only makes sense that self-indulgence had its place, too. I call this the band so nice, they named it twice phase of naming. Bands like Duran Duran, Mr. Mister, or Big Country...infamous for their one "hit" single, "In...A Big Country", earned a place here. Even rhyming names like Wang Chung and Oingo Boingo are arguably, equally random and just as annoying.
The decade of the 90's gave us a foreshadowing of some lackluster names to come. Tbat's because in the nineties, it suddenly became cool to band names that has numbers included in them. These bands seemingly had arbitrary names, but the numbers included in part of their moniker seemed even more arbitrary, as if that was even possible. I'm talking about artists like Maroon 5, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Blink 182, 311. All they made me want to do was take a number at the deli counter and wait for their singles to be halfway decent, or thinly sliced, whichever came first.
Which brings us to the "one word nonsense" phase of band naming we have evolved into today. Looking at the history is important as it gives us insight into how we got where we are currently. Nowadays we have gems like Skillet, Saliva and Hoobastank ruling the charts. As if the one word nonsense phase of naming wasn't annoying enough, we've gone and outdone ourselves by creating band names out of phrases, terminology that's biggest claim to fame before all of this would be possibly aspiring to the be THE winning phrase on Wheel of Fortune.
What I like to call " the long ass, taken out of context phase of band naming" includes, Plain White T's, Cute Is What We Aim For, Dashboard Confessional and The Academy Is... With these artists you could be mid conversation or you could be witnessing history in the making. There's no real way to know for certain.
I suppose you could say that Madonna only got it half right. Reinventing yourself is important, but renaming yourself is just as crucial.
Very few bands and artists have been smart enough to try to rise above it all, or ride with the tide, depending on your perspective. There's Jefferson Airplane. Or is that Jefferson Starship? Or perhaps just plain Starship. Oh, and don't forget John Cougar Mellencamp, John Cougar or John Mellencamp and finally, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy. Finally, we have Prince or is it the artist formerly known as Prince or is it the artist going through an identity crisis and fooling himself that everyone still refers to as Prince?
On second thought, maybe Hoobastank was a good idea.
When I was younger, I used to imagine I was going to start a band when I grew up, you know, with all the music I didn't know how to sing or instruments I didn't know how to play. Sure, you laugh now, but I'm not the only little girl who dared to dream so big. Just look how things worked out for Britney Spears.
Anyway, I still had to have a fake name to go with my fake dreams. When I was still in my, "little girl, Barbie and the Rockers phase", I thought the coolest name yet to be used had to be Crystal Clear. Remember, this was when girl bands like The Bangles and The Go Go's were all the rage. For the life of me, I just could not understand why someone hadn't snatched that sucker up by then.
As I got older and grunge rock became more of the focus, my prime band name choice became to shift, too. Suddenly one word titles oozed a certain degree of sophistication to me. That's when I settled upon Corduroy. In a space time continuum sense I still insist they both could work. I honestly don't know when it became so complicated.
Years ago, band naming, not unlike baby naming, used to be simple. Pretty much the word "The" followed by virtually any other word worked best the first time and really, every time.
There was the random objects phase. The Crystals. The Four Tops. The Five Satins. The Platters. You catch the drift or better yet, The Drifters.
The early sixties ushered in the "The" wave and rode it to the next level, tagging on pretty much any animal they could think of. The Byrds. The Yardbirds. The Monkees. Even The Beatles technically fell into this category although they really were a cross breed of animals meets play on words. You know, like The Wonders, only instead of Won-ders, it will be One-ders. Hell, even The Animals were a band once, too.
Meanwhile, the late sixties brought with it a time period of exploration and experimentation. Out of this we got some funky names like Led Zeppelin, Credence Clearwater Revival and Muddy Waters. But we also got some bland, looking around the room and calling out random things in an "I Love Lamp" like fashion seemed more appropriate. Names that come to mind here include Bread, Cream, Traffic, The Doors, The Who, Gerry and The Pacemakers and the ultimate lack of originality name of all time, The Band. Presumptuous or just plain dumb? You be the judge.
The eighties was a period of indulgence so it only makes sense that self-indulgence had its place, too. I call this the band so nice, they named it twice phase of naming. Bands like Duran Duran, Mr. Mister, or Big Country...infamous for their one "hit" single, "In...A Big Country", earned a place here. Even rhyming names like Wang Chung and Oingo Boingo are arguably, equally random and just as annoying.
The decade of the 90's gave us a foreshadowing of some lackluster names to come. Tbat's because in the nineties, it suddenly became cool to band names that has numbers included in them. These bands seemingly had arbitrary names, but the numbers included in part of their moniker seemed even more arbitrary, as if that was even possible. I'm talking about artists like Maroon 5, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Blink 182, 311. All they made me want to do was take a number at the deli counter and wait for their singles to be halfway decent, or thinly sliced, whichever came first.
Which brings us to the "one word nonsense" phase of band naming we have evolved into today. Looking at the history is important as it gives us insight into how we got where we are currently. Nowadays we have gems like Skillet, Saliva and Hoobastank ruling the charts. As if the one word nonsense phase of naming wasn't annoying enough, we've gone and outdone ourselves by creating band names out of phrases, terminology that's biggest claim to fame before all of this would be possibly aspiring to the be THE winning phrase on Wheel of Fortune.
What I like to call " the long ass, taken out of context phase of band naming" includes, Plain White T's, Cute Is What We Aim For, Dashboard Confessional and The Academy Is... With these artists you could be mid conversation or you could be witnessing history in the making. There's no real way to know for certain.
I suppose you could say that Madonna only got it half right. Reinventing yourself is important, but renaming yourself is just as crucial.
Very few bands and artists have been smart enough to try to rise above it all, or ride with the tide, depending on your perspective. There's Jefferson Airplane. Or is that Jefferson Starship? Or perhaps just plain Starship. Oh, and don't forget John Cougar Mellencamp, John Cougar or John Mellencamp and finally, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy. Finally, we have Prince or is it the artist formerly known as Prince or is it the artist going through an identity crisis and fooling himself that everyone still refers to as Prince?
On second thought, maybe Hoobastank was a good idea.
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