Album Titles -- Which bands are good at them? Which bands are bad?

bad LP titles: Go-Betweens...love(d) these guys, but Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express sounds like a bad 70's caper movie, Friends of Rachel Worth is oh-so precious, and Spring Hill Fair is just blah...

Sinead O'Connor - I Don Not Want What i haven't Got
Nicolette - Let No One Live Rent-Free In Your Head
Terence Trent D-Arby - The Hard Line According To...
Arctic Monkeys - Don't Make me Type This Whole Thing Out...You Know The One
BRMC - Take Them Out, On Your Own
The Prodigy - Always Outmanned, Never Outgunned

here are some good ones, equally mysterious & provocative:

Coleen - Everyone Alive wants Answers
BoC - Music Has The Right To Children
Scott Walker - Climate of Hunter
Jolie Holland - Springtime Can Kill You

the liars have good titles, in general ---> 'they threw us in a trench and stuck a monument on top', 'fins to make us more fish-like', 'they were wrong, so we drowned', 'drums not dead'. also, the oneida split - 'atheists, reconsider'

On the other hand, even weak Fall albums have interesting titles.

Lifetime Achievement for Bad Titles awards go to Mariah Carey and REO Speedwagon.

Stereolab are a band that seem to put too much thought into their titles...my fave Lab LP's are the ones with the simplest names (Dots And Loops, Aluminum Tunes)...

Saint Etienne are hit-or-miss: their best ones (Tiger Bay, Foxbase Alpha) sound like places you'd want to go, while others (Good Humour, So Tough) are punts...

Contact High with the Godz
Godz 2
The Third Testament
Godzundheit

That is beautiful.

(R.E.M. were only really good in this area up through Lifes Rich Pageant, imo. Calling albums Document, Green ... you can see why people don't like them!)

Is it just me, or has Public Enemy put out one LP with a great name (Fear Of A Black Planet), and a murderer's row of crap-tastic titles (Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, Revolverlution, There's a Poison Goin' On, New Whirl Odor, Apocalypse 91 - The Enemy Strikes Black)?

the human league lost it too ... "romantic?" might be a great album (and one i need to obtain soon again) but woah, question marks in titles? fuck that. shame, though, because "reproduction" and "travelogue" are almost perfect. "dare" too; "hysteria!" is spoiled, i guess, by def leppard getting there at around the same time (chronologists please check).

i think OMD win here:

orchestral manoeuvres in the dark
organisation
architecture and morality
dazzle ships
junk culture
crush
the pacific age
sugar tax
liberation

... i've missed one, i think. but hey. but fuck me, look at the titles. "the pacific age"! how audacious and pretentious do you have to be to be called "orchestral manoeuvres in the dark" and then make an album called "the pacific age"? (or, for that matter, "architecture and morality"?)

bad ones: pretty much everybody else

Death Cab for Cutie's done all right with their titles too.

Another dislike: Mary J. Blige, just for repetitiveness.

Butthole Surfers had some great ones, but they played the Trout Mask Replica/Yahoo Serious Festival three-word non-sequitur card a few too many times.

Terence Trent D'Arby indeed had some horrific titles; but his own parents likewise stuck HIM with an equally pretentious name, so maybe it's not entirely his fault.

That Sinead O'Connor title upthread infuriates me beyond any rational degree! Either use contractions or don't; make up your mind.

Beginning And End, Interwoven
I Said, This Is The Son Of Nihilism
So, Black Is Myself
Even Now, Still I Think
Abandon All Words At A Stroke, So That Prayer Can Come Spilling Out
Execration That Accept To Acknowledge
A Challenge To Fate
The Book Of "Eternity Set Aflame"
Saying I Love You, I Continue To Curse Myself
Allegorical Misunderstanding
The Wound That Was Given Birth To Must Be Bigger Than The Wound That Gave Birth
A Death Never To Be Complete
Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot'd
I Saw It! That Which Before I Could Only Sense...
Era Of Sad Wings
Decided... Already The Motionless Heart Of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called "I"

Although he blew it with Twenty-First Century Hard-Y Guide-Y Man really.

in the right hands, a title like "be here now" would be awesome. sadly, oasis spunked it.

Stereophonics are pretty bad - "You Gotta Go There to Come Back" - deep, man. And "Language, Sex, Violence, Other?".

The Emancipation Of Mimi
The Miseducation Of Lauren Hill

I also think the "High School Sexual Abbreviation Game" merits mention, for the clunkers it has produced:

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
See You Next Tuesday

and lastly, LP titles longer than, oh, 6 words almost always suck:

Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water
When The Pawn....................................

Roforofo Fight
Everything Scatter
Excuse 0
Expensive Shit
He Miss Road
Noise for Vendor Mouth
Ikoyi Blindness
Unnecessary Begging
Shuffering & Shmiling
Original Suffer Head
Mr. Follow Follow

and perhaps the best:

Beasts of No Nation

The Creams probably win for worst album titles ever, but I think they were aiming for that, and anyway I like some of their records. Their discography, in order:

A Big Dog.n [

-- ledge

B-b-but those are GREAT titles! 'Specially that first one.

matmos also, "the rose has teeth in the mouth of the beast", "a chance to cut is a chance to cure"....

peaches has pretty bad album titles, but i guess they're supposed to be bad, "fatherfucker", "impeach my bush"

Ha ha, I should be so intellechule! It always makes me think of "Simon Bar Sinister".

Gallagher, N. claims "I'm dyslexic, innit"

I thought "Impeach My Bush" was inspired!

Second place is Kool Moe Dee, obviously.

godheadSilo were pretty good at it(except for "the scientific supercake LP", which fails just on the basis of containing the word "super"): "elephantitus of the night", "skyward in triumph" and "share the fantasy".

That was one of Joe Walsh's ones, wasn't it?

Pink Flag
Chairs Missing
154
The Ideal Copy
A Bell Is A Cup...Until It Is Struck
It's Beginning To And Back Again

The titles and music dropped off with Manscape, but Send is pretty fantastic in both repsects.

Starlite Walker
Natural Bridge
American Water
Bright Flight
Tanglewood Numbers

(they're utterly great, of course. so baroque, so unremittingly ostentatious, these aren't so much album titles as metallurgic force-fields sinking dichotomies of teeth into the universal carmada, scuttling Matisse in his floundering panflotilla as they rummage for scribes in deserted mortuary gardens.)

(seriously, though, i'll give them this: you don't forget a Mars Volta album title. and the titles say pretty much all you need to know about the music, so you'll know whether you're gonna love it or loathe it just from having a look at the cover.)

still, 'goat' is a motherfucking lovely title