Inexplicable Album Titles

    An album title. Sometimes it's just the band's name. Other times it's the same as one of the song titles, or it's a quote from one of the songs' lyrics. It can also express something about the album without referencing anything from the actual songs (i.e., AND THEN THERE WERE THREE).


    But occasionally an album title is so utterly disconnected from the actual album as to be mind-boggling.


    My favorite example of this is ENCHANTED CARESS, a 1996 collection primarily consisting of demos recorded in 1979 by Illusion, a band formed by the surviving founding members of Renaissance. The songs are generally mundane and less interesting than most of what was previously released by Illusion, much less Renaissance. The title ENCHANTED CARESS has no possible connection to anything about the songs, and fails to evoke or communicate anything whatsoever about the album.


    Another example is SPEECH, an album made by what remained of Steamhammer after it lost its only lead singer and no longer even constituted a complete band. (There are two vocal tracks among the three songs, with vocals by a guest singer; one of the vocals is mixed too low for the words to be comprehensible.) Again, the title does not relate to the songs or the album in any discernable way. (Incidentally, like the Illusion album, this one also has a Renaissance connection.)


    Does anyone have any favorite examples of their own?

    Quote from Liquid Len

    Don Henley-Building the Perfect Beast. Is that perfect beast a Squonk?

    The title track of that overrated album is 80s synth pop at its most bombastic and horrible. It's a good question why he gave it that title.


    Joe Walsh's The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get just annoys me. I understand it (I think) but it's just ...


    Rammstein's Mutter. Absolutely fantastic song. But it's not a great album title (Mother, in English).

    As a big Radiohead fan I've never understood nor liked the title of their debut album, Pablo Honey (and it's a terrible cover as well). I'm sure I could dig up an explanation if I tried but I can't be bothered.

    Abandon all reason

    Neither Fish Nor Flesh - Terence Trent Derby - Pretentious male appendage (that's a comment by me, not part of the title! :) )


    The Best Of Milli Vanilli - Oxymoron! Obviously!

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

    Quote from IWishItWouldRainDown

    Taylor Swift's Folklore

    Actually, folk is a genre of music; folklore is something else.


    Quote from Liquid Len

    Don Henley-Building the Perfect Beast

    Quote from FeelItComing

    Rammstein's Mutter

    Personally, I would exclude any albums with title tracks since there is at least some explanation for those.


    Quote from foxfeeder

    The Best Of Milli Vanilli

    That's a joke, right? I don't find an album with that title, but I do find "Best of the Best/Greatest Hits" by that, um, "group."


    Quote from rkive

    Genesis- Foxtrot.

    I don't see what this has to do with Supper's Ready. :/

    I always thought it was a reference to "the fox on the rocks."

    Quote from DecomposingMan

    That's a joke, right? I don't find an album with that title, but I do find "Best of the Best/Greatest Hits" by that, um, "group."

    Twas a joke, but it is the subtitle of the album. There are likely lots of others, if there's a "best of" the Stylistics, that's another. ;)

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

    I also assumed Foxtrot is a partial reference to 'the fox on the rocks'. There's a 'deception' theme in Willow Farm, foxes are used to symbolise deceit or slyness (I think Paul Whitehead said that's why the fox features), hence by extension 'Foxtrot'. Without that context the title, which could be either the dance or the NATO 'f', wouldn't seem to make much sense.

    Quote from panopticom

    Mariah Carey's "Me, I Am Mariah: The Elusive Chanteuse"

    I'm not sure it's inexplicable but it's certainly very stupid.


    Quote from foxfeeder

    Neither Fish Nor Flesh - Terence Trent Derby

    It's possibly explicable partly as TTD consciously grasping for something enigmatic sounding to emphasise his deliberate swerve away from the commercial pop sound of his debut album. The resulting rather overbaked mess would've been better titled Neither Good Nor Listenable.

    Abandon all reason

    Edited once, last by Backdrifter ().

    Like 1
    Quote from IWishItWouldRainDown

    Collins' Hello, I Must Be Going! while his song 'We Say Hello Goodbye' was featured in his next album No Jacket Required.

    I've always thought 'We Say Hello Goodbye' was recorded during the Hello, I Must Be Going! sessions.

    That’s like Houses Of The Holy by Led Zeppelin. Houses of the Holy was the title of their fifth album, but the song Houses of The Holy was on their sixth album, Physical Graffiti. Fun little oddity.

    There's also Roxette's debut album Pearls of Passion with the same-titled song not included among the album's original tracklist, being only released at its time as a B-Side to one of the singles. 'Pearls of Passion' would only appear in the album 11 years later with the remastered edition.

    Quote from IWishItWouldRainDown

    Collins' Hello, I Must Be Going! while his song 'We Say Hello Goodbye' was featured in his next album No Jacket Required.

    I've always thought 'We Say Hello Goodbye' was recorded during the Hello, I Must Be Going! sessions.

    But the album title is not the same as the song title (which, by the way, is We Said Hello Goodbye... 'we', not 'I'.

    So I struggle to see how the use of the word 'hello' in a song from the next album makes the title of the previous album' inexplicable',.

    Quote from IWishItWouldRainDown

    Well, folklore also stands for the music genre. You can either say "I play an album of English folklore" or "I play an album of English folk".

    No, folklore means myths, beliefs, classic stories of a culture. You could have songs of any genre, including folk, about folklore but it's not a music genre itself.

    Abandon all reason