The Funniest, Strangest, and Most Misguided Album Titles of All Time

We talk about great albums here quite frequently.

But how about the titles of albums? 

• Which ones are the most creative? 
• The most ill-advised?
• Which ones are just flat-out weird?
• Which ones have a fun reference or a hidden meaning? 

All right, I’ll kick things off here with the category of wordplay. 

Let’s start with the Greg Kihn Band:

Who used the name of the artist as a pun for 12 album titles, including these six albums that charted on the Billboard 200:

Michael Roe was the lead singer and guitarist for the 77s, a Christian alt-rock band. 

In the mid-90s, he released a solo album called The Boat Ashore. 

One artist that could have used his name in a creative way in his album titles is Lyle Lovett. 

The possibilities were certainly there: Lovett or Leave It, or You Gotta Lovett, Lovett to Death (would work well as a final album if he knew he was near the end).

He did have one album that used wordplay however: Joshua Judges Ruth:

I always wondered if there was some social commentary insinuated in there somewhere as well.  Maybe not.

Then there’s You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish: REO Speedwagon’s first top-40 entry.

Because nothing screams rock and roll like possibly the corniest pun in an album title ever, complete with a tuna fish on the cover, and a tuning fork sticking out of its mouth. 

C’mon.You know you love it. 

Two great ways that a band introduced themselves to the world by weaving their name into the sentence of their debut album title:

Album titles that play off of famous songs or other album titles would be another sub-category. 

A couple of examples I saw mentioned in a Reddit forum:

And possibly the most deceptive play on one’s name in an album title?

That would be sacked drummer Pete Best’s post-Beatles album, Best of the Beatles:

Sneaky for sure, but can anyone begrudge him for playing the only card he had left?

*Off-topic, but instead of a Beatles’ biopic about a band whose every last bit of minutia has already been plundered:

How about a Pete Best biopic? 

Let’s move along to the category of album titles that could have been workshopped a little longer. 

We’ll start with George Clinton:

Umm, no. 

When I worked at a news agency in high school, somebody had taken a marker and scribbled the title of Joe Walsh’s second solo album, The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get on the wall. 

Not familiar with the album title at the time, my friend Matt and I briefly pondered what it could mean before dismissing it as a co-worker’s ramblings while very high, possibly the guy who had once accidentally smoked a $20 bill. 

Walsh said the title came from a homeless man approaching him on the street.  He thought the man was going to ask for money, but instead he simply wanted a stick of gum. 

Attention Shoppers! was the third studio album by Starz, a band which had struggled to find commercial success. 

The combination of the album’s title and the name of the band wreaks of desperation.

They were, however, credited as an influence by members of several hard rock/metal bands that came after them, such as Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, Poison, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi and even Metallica. I listened to them earlier this year and liked what I heard.

If there’s a story behind (no pun intended) the name of Paul McCartney’s 2012 release, Kisses on the Bottom?

Finally, the title of Meghan Trainor’s debut album? 

Maybe she just left the answer blank when asked to submit the album info to the label.  The album went #1 and spawned four Top-20 singles, so I guess it never really mattered.

How about album titles that are unusually long?

The boy bands have won, and all the copyists and the tribute bands and the TV talent show producers have won, if we allow our culture to be shaped by mimicry, whether from lack of ideas or from exaggerated respect. You should never try to freeze culture. What you can do is recycle that culture. Take your older brother’s hand-me-down jacket and re-style it, re-fashion it to the point where it becomes your own. But don’t just regurgitate creative history, or hold art and music and literature as fixed, untouchable and kept under glass. The people who try to ‘guard’ any particular form of music are, like the copyists and manufactured bands, doing it the worst disservice, because the only thing that you can do to music that will damage it is not change it, not make it your own. Because then it dies, then it’s over, then it’s done, and the boy bands have won.

And, of course:

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring
There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
And if you fall it won’t matter, cuz you’ll know that you’re right

Two albums later, she was at it again, although not quite as lengthy:

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

Let’s close with what I believe is the only time:

• A band’s name…
• The title of the album…
• …and a song from the album were all one and the same:

1974’s Bad Company:

What album titles have stood out for you for whatever reason? 

Do share!..

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