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thosekidsareonacid-blog · 6 years

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It's all there if you want it

That's the name I've given to this instrumental jazz song I'm listening to in my favourite pub. I’m calling it that because it's literally the most "deep" name I could think of on an empty stomach. I guess it's more than that though . I've been thinking a lot lately about how people name songs , and recently when I had to come up with titles for some old songs that I had written , it really got me thinking about a few things ...

Concept versus lyrics

This is my first stumbling block to be honest. Do I pick a few lyrics that have a particular weight attached to them , or do I try and extract the entire feeling or theme of the song and derive my title from that ? There are certainly good examples of both. I can't , for the life of me, picture Love Me Do being called anything other than exactly that. I mean have you ever even heard the song ? It's a perfect synopsis of what you're in for to be frank , and it is a perfect pop song (harmonica 4 lyfe!). However, the Beatles do all sorts of things that the rest of us, simply just can't or shouldn't pull off. This version of the band, may have written the best pop songs of our life time (and thus it's a high water mark for that reggae metal "experiment" you’ve been working on in your basement) simply put, you can’t pull this off very often unless your the Beatles.

And let's be honest , when it's done in a lazy way, it kinda sucks , kinda sucks big time bud. Your honor, members of the jury, please consider exhibit b.... Roxanne. First off, let me say, Sting can slap the bass better than most people on this planet not Sir Paul of course, but most . Secondly, his name is Sting, and that in itself is hard to stomach. But imagine, long before drinking games helped us through this 3 minuted and 13 second “song”, sitting in the POLICE studio, take upon take, after literally saying "Roxanne" thousands of times, and wracking your brains about what to call your new "creation". I propose , like me , you'd advocate for anything other than the laziest thing you could think of.

“What should we call it fellas?”

“Just joking, clearly it will be Roxanne. Anyone have any cocaine?” - Sting

In this case , redundant seems like a compliment, and I'd suggest, it actually makes the song worse . I hate it .

On the other side of proverbial coin, consider how fucking good something like Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobics is. If you have never heard the song (you need to ! ) , It's basically an amazing feat of rhyming in which the beat slowly speeds up as the lyrics start flowing , phonetically , from a to z , coming to a crescendo at z. Not once do they mention either "alphabet" or "aerobics" at any point of the song, but hearing the title once lets you know exactly what you're in for... and it's clever enough that if you don't get it right away, you will by the time they get to at least "e" or "f". This is some good shit all around .

On the other hand , you ever heard "break stuff" by limp Bizkit ? Yeah exactly.

So I guess the conclusion to draw here is, both are valid , but I will say, I think that there is a certain charm and extra thought put in to having to conceptually come up with a title , as opposed to just extracting lyrics from the song (I'm looking at you "For Those About to Rock.... We Salute You")

Heartbreaker is my favourite song

I’d like to magically whisk you back to a simpler time, if I could. The year is 1998, and lets just say things are a little different than you're probably used to. Internet service providers measured your usage not by Gigabytes, but instead by time used on the internet. Download speeds being what they were,a person was lucky to get 3 songs downloaded a night, and that’s provided no one interrupted the download by picking up the phone mid file transfer.

So picture it, you’ve got Lime wire all fired up, you’ve searched your song out, and in a measly two hours, you are going to rock the fuck out to “HEartbrEeaker.MP3″.

Two hours later, and a couple refreshes of IGN64,com and you’re almost there.

98% “Wow...modern technology is really something” you think to yourself “couple more days, I’ll have enough to burn a CD”

99% “For the love of fuck Dad, don’t pick up the phone... we’re almost there ....”

100% “Alright, best get Winamp booted up so i can listen to this tune RIGHT AWAY”

You turn your Sound Blaster speakers to a 7, and whambasco......

DIONNE FUCKING WARWICK!!??

Yeah that’s right of course we were all hoping for the sweet sounds of Led Zeppelin, but unbeknownst to 16 year old you and I, there is a Dionne Warwick song of the same name..... and Pat Benatar, and Mariah Carey. And you’re not getting your 2 hours of download time back... it’s gone... forever.

So really, just about all we can take from this is, be fucking original with your song name! You don’t want to be the asshole at the party explaining to every second person there that you “also wrote a song called trapped in the closet” and that it’s “art”. You’re ruining the party and bumming everyone out.

Be Serious, or don’t , but for the love of all things sacred, don’t be too precious

This is a tough one, to be frank. Like most of what I’m talking about in this blog, it really comes down to personal opinion and or taste. So to each their own, and all that.

I think one thing we could all agree on (or at least will for the sake of making this easier to write) is that there is a fine line between deliciously clever, and steaming pile of horse shit. There is an art to making a title clever, but also not making it cringeworthingly cheesy and embarassing. Take for example the Built to Spill song Carry the Zero. The song is brilliant and lazy all at the same time. It is clever because in math, you can’t carry a zero, and the song is about failing, so it all kind of makes sense in a cute kinda way. It’s pretty perfect.

In the trash heap directly in opposition to the brilliance that is one Mr. Doug Marstch, is Skater Boi by Avril Lagvigne. Its completely unfair to compare the titles of a pop artist’s songs (which were mostly written for her), to one of the best indie rock bands of all time, but here we are, doing it. One can only assume the “Boi” is skateboard talk for “boy” and maybe I’m grasping at straws here, but I think it’s probably supposed to be edgy. Maybe, time has been unkind to Mrs. Lavigne but the title was never edgy (we made fun of it as the “target audience”, 16 year old kids that rode skateboards),

On the other hand, there’s another pitfall I think we’ve all seen made here and there. Taking yourself a little too seriously. Remember that song “ I Just died in your arms tonight” ? I can guarantee no one has ever seen that title without having heard it and not thought “oh would you just fuck off with that shit you knob”. Literally no one, ever.

If it wasn’t so bad it would be funny, but it is, and it’s not.

At some point Cutting Crew (of course I googled it) thought this was a song about feelings, and just putting it all out there, an artistic statement. Can you imagine?

Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks

I don’t know what I’ve accomplished here. Quite frankly, I don’t think much. I was thinking of my favourite artist of all time Elliott Smith today. He has a variety of songs that he didn’t even bother to name. No. Name #1, No. Name #4, Waltz #2. etc. Whoa dude what are you doing, trying to make this blog irrelevant or something??!! Maybe he just got sick of thinking about all these friggin factors when he was writing his songs. Maybe that’s the whole point... who actually cares what a song is called. Just name it something and write the next one.

Still though... Skater Boi is so chuddy right?

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