Dave Grohl, frontman of the Foo Fighters, recently declared in an interview that their name is the “dumbest band name ever”, and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys famously despises the name they chose since they started to get recognition back in 2005. This got me thinking about other names of bands that you just kind of accept because they’re so huge, but when you really think about it are pretty ridiculous.
I’m going to start with a big one that might cause a bit of outrage: The Beatles. Be honest with yourself, it really is a terrible pun (naming themselves after an insect but changing the spelling to the form of musical beats), even if they are one of (if not the) greatest bands of all time.
So now I’ve thrown you in at the deep end I can go on to some other band names that really needed more thought put into. We’ve seen that good bands don’t necessarily have good names, but sometimes a bad name also equals bad band. Like, for example, Blood On The Dancefloor. Terrible name, terrible band. And then there’s marmite bands like Coldplay, who didn’t even come up with the name themselves- Chris Martin nicked it from another band at his university. It sounds just as depressing as their music to me (I don’t like marmite, in case you hadn’t guessed).
Sometimes a band’s name is so terrible it’s brilliant. Most of these are centred around a clever (or not so clever) pun. Take Limp Bizkit for example. Possibly one of my favourites, even if it supposedly refers to a game where a group of males, um, play a game involving bodily fluids (it’s gross I won’t go into any more detail), and they deliberately spelt it wrong to be ~different~ and ~edgy~. At the other end of the spectrum we have The The, which yes made for a great Michael McIntyre joke about the Yorkshire accent, but is just a little bit too pretentious to be funny in a good way- it’s just plain stupid.
If you went through the emo phase of teenagers everywhere back in 2007, you’ll know Panic! At the Disco and that infamous, disappearing in 2009, exclamation mark. Even without the odd placement of punctuation the name is pretty ridiculous, especially as it is named after a song by The Smiths, it just doesn’t seem to go with the theme.
I could delve further into the world of awful band names, but if you get much deeper it starts to get slightly dark. If you go on a google search for terrible band names, you’ll find a surprising (or not so surprising, I don’t know) amount containing ‘Hitler’ or other Nazi related terms, and they’re some of the least offensive ones. The immature child in me, however, does appreciate the Slovenian two piece electric band formed and also disbanded in 2005 named, Poo.
Sources
http://louderthanwar.com/top-50-worst-band-names-ever-or-most-outrageous-or-just-plain-stupid/
http://www.cracked.com/article_15118_the-25-most-ridiculous-band-names-in-rock-history_p7.html
Image Sources
http://www.gigwise.com/news/95897/listen-foo-fighters-stream-epic-new-album-sonic-highways-in-full
https://twitter.com/WowSoPunny/status/516437764485943296
http://bitterfingers.net/2011/03/innocent-pleasure-panic-at-the-disco-that-green-gentleman/
Edited by Amelia Bauer-Madden