Is there a hermeneutics of contemporary album titles?

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Contemporary trends in rock album titles: would-be pithy psuedoprofundities or psuedopsuedoprofundities, often a slightly tweaked cliché, e.g. All That You Can't Leave Behind, More Than You Think You Are, Cracked Rear View, Shangri-La Dee Da, etc. That or vacancies like By the Way, New Old Songs (an indie variant—vaguely evoking decadence but little more—would be Turn on the Bright Lights). Most of these seem to studiously avoid meaning anything at all.

Of course there are always: in-jokes, preferably scatlogical (Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water); therapy-informed "howl for help" titles (Dysfunctional, Break the Cycle, My Own Prison, Issue); "gangrape the Saturday Evening Post irony (Life Is Peachy, Portrait of an American Family); affectionate irony (often accompanied by anachronism: International Superhits, Rockin' the Suburbs); pofaced playful punning (White Blood Cells); shitfaced playful punning (Veni Vidi Vivious), totally unironic salutations (De Stijl).

Countertrends: teasingly self-referential titles (Is This It), neo-futurist titles (Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots, nearly any Stereolab title), nonsequitirs (Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone), psuedopolitical nonsequitirs (Hail to the Thief, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top).

Note the overwhelming prevalence of monosyllables. Anti-intellectualism? Populism? "Populism"?

Country album titles play by their own rules (which are anacrhonistic, largely—they often twist cliché too but not in such a way as to render them opaque, e.g. No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems or Steers and Stripes), and to a certain extent so do hip-hop album titles (though nü-metal titles seem to take many of their cues from hip-hop titles; hip-hop titles often seem to directly engage an artist's persona in a way that rock titles typically shy away from—see below). Jazz (non-avant jazz that is) titles are strictly classicist.

Those are some exceptions. The rest seem to be talking to each other somehow. Like Radiohead's title wouldn't be imaginable with U2's (positive and negative) example.

Perhaps, given the diversify of approaches I've sketched in above, it's unwise to suggest that there is something to today's titles, something that might be grasped and articulated. One thing I've noticed ("noticed") is how so few of the album titles actually reference the musicians themselves. Even Norah Jones's largely classicist title Come Away with Me is muted somewhat by the generic portrait on the cover

http://www.13thmuse.com/images/Norah%20Jones%20Album%20Cover.jpg

while a similarly-tiled Frank Sinatra LP of long ago makes the most of the title:

http://64.95.118.51/images/opti/41/c3/143597-resized200.JPG

Is there something dated about the idea of titles being a kind of little fiction, a meaningful conceit, that contemporary bands struggle to avoid any such referentiality?

Am I making any sense? These are scattered thoughts toward a hermeneutics of contemporary album titles.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Pick a cut-off date

― dave q, Tuesday, 8 April 2003 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Cracked Rear View
Not a pseudoprofundity. A butt joke. All Hootie albums are secretly dirty jokes. "Kootchypop" as in to pop a coochie, and "Fairweather Johnson" as in a pecker that only throbs with life when the wind blow south by southwest.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

'Musical Chairs' must be a flatulence joke then!

― dave q, Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

what does hermeneutics mean?

― robin (robin), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:06 (twenty-two years ago)

God I love that Sinatra cover. Is that tacky or what?
Great album, though.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Whats pofaced mean?

― SplendidMullet (iamamonkey), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Custos, how do you know so much about Hootie & the Blowfish?

― Adam A. (Keiko), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

hermeneutics. The art or science of interpretation, esp. of Scripture. Commonly distinguished from exegesis or practical exposition.

tacky. Dowdy, shabby; in poor taste, cheap, vulgar.

po-faced. Having or assuming an expressionless or impassive face, poker-faced; priggish, narrow-minded, or smug.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Jazzbo you are reinforcing the reigning orthodoxy. What makes the Sinatra cover tacky and why has that style of cover fallen from fashion? In other words: album covers often used to be similar to movie posters in establishing a dynamic between "characters," or just a personality for one "character." Why no more? Or is my theory just bunk?

Also are album titles talking to each other? They seem theoretically the least hermetic aspect of a record to me so I see some value in this idea. I often see indie-rock (or elite-rock) aesthetics (incl. album titles) as (perhaps unconsciously) reacting to trends in the mainstream, both positively and negatively.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I once heard a college professor discuss Melville's verbal t(r)icks in Moby Dick by conflating "hermeneutics" with "Herman's antics." Man I hate that kind of thing. But it's funny.

How about titles that emphasize the product-nature of albums: Pizzicato Five's The Fifth Release From Matador, Yes' 90125, Aphex Twin's 26 Mixes for Cash, etc.?

― Neudonym, Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I found it odd that these three bands gained popularity almost simultaneosly: The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives (any others like this?)

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:24 (twenty-two years ago)

[conflating "hermeneutics" with "Herman's antics" = the punning heuristic, my least favorite of contemporary academic trends.]

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:41 (twenty-two years ago)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Custos, how do you know so much about Hootie & the Blowfish?
Dude, I have ended up reading at least three different articles where they brought up the derivation of album titles, and inevitably theres some muso crit emitting a puerile titter and then explaining what those hootie rekkid title *really* means.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 00:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Which category is "Oops.. I Did It Again" in?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 02:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Mistake?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 02:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Sterling actually that's a good one because it bucks the trends I mention above. It's a pun on the "sophomore album" and of course has the "does she or doesn't she" coyness then-integral to Britney's persona. So it has some of the quality that I find absent in contemporary rock titles.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 02:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Is there something dated about the idea of titles being a kind of little fiction, a meaningful conceit, that contemporary bands struggle to avoid any such referentiality?

I was thinking about this the other day Amateurist, while listening to Dizzy Rascal's 'I Luv You' - the bit where the narrative of the song, the story breaks down and Dizzee's ego starts shining through and he starts talking about himself and giving shout outs to Roll Deep. It occurred to me that UK Garage is a fundamentally post-modern style of music. Let me try explain.

With indie/rock I always felt that the approach was that the music had to be its own little contained universe and that the artist couldn't invade into the music. The artist and the art were separate realities: the art was a representation of the artist's reality. There is this strict 'keep yourself' out of the music approach, whilst simultaneously plying as much as the naked (ie naked of your personality) emotion as you can. UK Garage, by its own braggard boorishness and ego-baiting, its system of community, shouting out to people, has, without stopping the fan, started referencing outwith the hemmed in narratives of the song. So you get Dizzee communicating with the (real) reality, his mates, at the back end of his 'story'.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a UKG sleeve similar to that Sinatra one, but with a more machismo take on the expression.

I've not expressed myself clearly. And I don't know if I can properly stand up for this claim in relation to every indie album. But, it would also tie in with this continuing thesis I was trying to develop about how indie's prime values are 'integrity' and 'memory'. To allow yourself into the song, would be in indie's eyes a breach of the integrity of that song.

I dunno. Am I making any sense?

(Spurred by seeing the It Runs in the Family film starring the Douglas' on television today and noting how the fiction of the film directly refers to a reality (ie the Douglas clan's actual real life relationships) other than its own. [Of course this is nothing new, see, e.g., Scream a film that positively knows by sacrificing Drew Barrymore in the first scene - it is causing a shock. It's trading on her real-life biggie status.)

I suppose all this would make the late 60s Rock's modernism. Are there any arguments to be made here?

?!?!?!

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 April 2003 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

sterling said something recently to the effect of "rock never had a modernism". then nitsuh went and made some rockism/ilm, modernism/po-mo parallels on that ed's po-mo thread. now cozen's theory. the time has come: ROCK MODERNISM - can we eat it?

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 19 April 2003 16:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I think that maybe if you were to give 'rock' its loosest possible meaning (see mark s' glut of 'is xXx rock threads?' for how malleable the concept is) and have Sinatra, pre-40s rock etc as pre-modernism (whatever that's normally called) then you could maybe argue late 60s on = modernism.

You're on icy ground in hobnail boots though, I think.

I think UKG is not post-modern in that it is the line of a chronology of pre-modern-post but that it is because it deals with all these issues of referentiality and 'truths' that normally characterise pomo.

(The dominant narrative of song that operates to create an illusion of normality against which 'truth' can be judged = "oh well, oh well, that girl's some bitch you know".

"Big up Roll Deep" = the mad person = outside the 'thought' of the 'truth' = the bad Other haha

UKG works because, because of the shoutout culture, it doesn't cast the unassimilable into a confused hell. There is no outside).

< /shut-up>

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 April 2003 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

You should check the po-mo thread. Frederic Jameson actually says the equivalent of high modernism in music would be the Beatles and the Stones and thereabouts. (Not on the thread -- in a book.) I take slight issue with this in that 60s rock turned out to be way more popular and grounded than modernist work did; I think it's truer if you extend yourself from 60s rock through indie and connect up certain attitudes and approaches to the music more so than the music itself. Which is what gave me "modernism = rockism." (There's a big checklist on the other thread.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 19 April 2003 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Or better yet, "modernism" = "whatever strain of thinking about rock music would make people value a supposed line running from the Beatles to the Clash to Sonic Youth."

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 19 April 2003 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Note that Rachel Felder, who we may not want to listen to on this one, jumps specifically from Jameson's claim (Beatles and Stones as modernism) and claims 85-95 indie and alternative -- especially shoegazing -- as "postmodern." The book in which she does this, though, was supposedly a revision of a masters thesis of something like that, so it's easy to suspect she was just looking for an academic excuse to go on and on about Kitchens of Distinction.

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 19 April 2003 18:45 (twenty-two years ago)

(I don't know if you've seen this Amateurist, but you might be interested. Note: not related. Well, obliquely.)

Ignore the prick at the bottom.

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 April 2003 18:55 (twenty-two years ago)

You American's really like Kitchens of Distinction, huh?

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Not especially.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:25 (twenty-two years ago)

cozen: that's a good thread but i don't see the connection. also i don't know and don't care about those britpop bands. i hope people realize that this thread's title was tongue-in-cheek. i don't usually go around using words like 'hermeneutics.' i guess my thought was that album titles talk to each other somehow, and that taken together they almost constitute a discourse, one with (ever-shifting) rules and so on. but obv. i didn't express myself well, or maybe the thought is just totally banal and i only thought it was worth sharing. hm.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:25 (twenty-two years ago)

The connection was an implied one in my head: Dizzee Rascal's shout-outs are the reinjection of the artist into art (obviously this isn't the originary song, but I'm useless with facts) and Frank's big smug smile was the last time the artist's real-life ego was a fundamental actual part of the work.

JBR, for 'Americans' read 'silly old nabisco'.

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:30 (twenty-two years ago)

(Oh, the thread, isn't connected. I just thought you'd like it.)

― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:31 (twenty-two years ago)

i wish more rappers would play characters with some degree of overtness (rather than not be overt and then say they're characters in interviews which is just being pussy).

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 20 April 2003 09:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Humpty Hump to thread

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 20 April 2003 19:36 (twenty-two years ago)

incidentally, the possibility of there being a coherent hermeneutics of album titles was murdered in its cradle by one W. Axl Rose when he titled a GnR outtakes album "The Spaghetti Incident?" exactly like that: quotation & question marks conspiring with the sleeve's picture, a close-up shot of some spaghetti in sauce, to forever destroy the ability of album titles to signify. Theoretically, a great album title like Antaeus's Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan might have brought the whole thing back to live, but in '00 a band called the Spinatras re-nailed the coffin shut by titling their album @Midnight.com -- yes, really.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 20 April 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

i think hip-hop album titles/covers retain some of the ("pre-modern[ist]"?) conceits seen in that sinatra cover above.

by contrast, the trend in indie titles tends to an often-severe opacity. or am i missing the significance of "supper" (smog)? actually smog is a poor example because i think his aesthetic of album titles/covers/concepts is fundamentally literary.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:41 (twenty-one years ago)

What about one-word titles? Like the Jesus Lizard (Goat, Liar, etc.)?

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 00:39 (twenty-one years ago)

i always sense a certain terse machismo in those titles, as in the terse machismo that is a big part of punk in general (not that the jesus lizard are "punk" strictly speaking, but they wouldn't exist without punk). i don't know enough about the albums to say any more about it.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 00:41 (twenty-one years ago)

oh a somewhat new trend (not entirely new, but seeming to emerge from the shadows if you will): the droll-as-fuck indie joke title. "underachievers please try harder" is the shining example. it somehow seems at odds with the music itself, but is probably a welcome trend insofar as that type of music has a frequent tendency to take itself too seriously.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 00:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Kiss "Love Gun"

― sherm, Tuesday, 20 July 2004 02:14 (twenty-one years ago)

[latebloomer]
What about one-word titles? Like the Jesus Lizard (Goat, Liar, etc.)?

[amateur!st]
i always sense a certain terse machismo in those titles

Yeah, see also Foetus: Deaf, Ache, Hole, Nail, Thaw, Sink, ...

― OleM (OleM), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 12:22 (twenty-one years ago)

The Negro Problem, "Post Minstrel Syndrome" to thread!

― phil dennison, Tuesday, 20 July 2004 13:22 (twenty-one years ago)

that has to be one of the most unappealing album titles ever.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Not album titles, but when I saw the trailer for the movie Seducing Dr. Lewis the other day, I wanted to claw my eyes out at yet ANOTHER movie title beginning with a present participle. (They even compare it in the trailer to Waking Ned Devine.)

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

In fact, I'm starting a thread about that.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 20 July 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

"[latebloomer]
What about one-word titles? Like the Jesus Lizard (Goat, Liar, etc.)?

[amateur!st]
i always sense a certain terse machismo in those titles

Yeah, see also Foetus: Deaf, Ache, Hole, Nail, Thaw, Sink, ... "