I’m obsessed with the names people give things.

I don’t really know why, but it’s true nonetheless. We established this fairly early on in this site’s history, but it certainly hasn’t gotten less true over the intervening time.

And so, as I was idly looking through some album reviews today, my eye was drawn almost inevitably to the titles. And I started thinking to myself, “you know, some of these titles are awful” — at which point, a light went on in my head. “What are the worst titles people have given to their albums?” I thought, followed almost immediately by, “I should write that up for Superstarcastic.”

Compiling the list was pretty tough, actually. I had to leave off such venerable classics as the fourth Led Zeppelin album, Achtung Baby, and The Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium, for instance, and I didn’t even have room for either of my (least) favorite titles from Helloween, Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Rabbit Don’t Come Easy. Given the depth of the competition and the sheer number of options, I could easily have inadvertently left something else off too — I’m sure most of you cyberspace music-obsessives have your own examples of atrociously-named albums, and I hope you share them in the comments; I don’t consider my list the last word on the subject by any stretch of the imagination, and I’d love to read your examples. But, to get things started, here’s what I came up with.

#10: Marillion, Anoraknophobia (2001)

Maybe it’s too easy to pick on a band that named itself after a J. R. R. Tolkien book and that spent most of its first decade of existence carting around a lead singer who called himself “Fish.” But there’s a sense in which Anoraknophobia distills into one “word” everything dislikeable about the dregs of the prog-rock movement: smug, self-satisfied cleverness that isn’t in the service of anything greater, and that doesn’t even have any self-relevance. After all, it’s not as if Anoraknophobia is a concept album about people who don’t like to wear winter coats (although Marillion are the sort of band whom I wouldn’t put it past to do something like that). It’s just a piece of meaningless wordplay that also served as the inspiration for some unpleasantly kitschy cover art.

#9: Soulwax, Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent. (2007)

I couldn’t let this one go by without mentioning it, but I also can’t rate it any higher than this because it’s deliberately trying to make lists like this. As of this writing, this is now the longest title of any album ever released, and the paragraph of not-very-interesting prose that constitutes it is just an attempt to outdo Fiona Apple (more on her later) at her own game. It’s obnoxious and boring at the same time, a sort of calculated banality that’s just an excuse to try and get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Most of us were over that sort of thing by the end of junior high. But then again, if most of us had the chance to remix an Einstürzende Neubauten song, we wouldn’t freaking lose it.

#8. Sigur Rós, ( ) (2002)

Even though I’ll probably take some flak for it, I’ll be honest — I’ve never gotten into Sigur Rós, and I think it’s because they’re far too coy to really be good. I guess it makes sense to release an album like this with no track listing when you’ve made an entire career out of writing the same. exact. song. over and over again, but calling it ( ) when you could have called it Parentheses is the sort of art-school trick you pull when you’re more interested in designing the album cover than, you know, recording the album. And for the record, the album art is well executed, I guess, but it’s pretty bland. Kind of like the music it houses.

#7: Men Without Hats, The Adventures of Women and Men Without Hate in the 21st Century (1989)

This one’s easily my favorite album musically from this list, but the title is long, awkward, and makes it sound like the record’s going to contain nothing but, say, remixes of the Battlestar Galactica theme music. It’s an album that’s obsessed with themes of aging, and of time changing, but they could just as easily have called it In the 21st Century — which is the name of one of the songs, and which is also what everyone calls this album anyway — and saved themselves the trouble.

#6: Coheed and Cambria, Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005)

I think the sub-Lovecraftian subtitle of this one (just a hair worse than the one attached to the band’s follow-up to this album, Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World for Tomorrow) is what vaults it into the upper echelons of bad-album-namedom. Additionally, while it’s admittedly easy to claim to be uninformed about the work of a band that has devoted its entire career to churning out different installments in the same conceptual science fiction soap opera, I have no idea what the not-particularly-grammatical main title is even supposed to mean. I think maybe it needs some more punctuation, because there’s a big difference between, say, “Good Apollo! I’m burning star!” and “Good, Apollo I’m burning, star,” although neither option is really that much of an improvement…

#5. (tie) Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1977); Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1978); Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1980)

He gives these albums these titles so you can tell them apart, you know.

#4. Pete Best, Best of the Beatles (1965)

Yes, it’s got to be disappointing to be Pete Best and have to live the rest of your life knowing that the band you got kicked out of became the biggest group in the history of recorded music. (At least Stu Sutcliffe a) left the band of his own accord and b) died before they became even moderately popular.) But even that’s no excuse for this album title, whose smarmy pun of a title is simply an excuse to try and bilk consumers who don’t read the packaging very closely. It’s hard to imagine a scam like this getting Pete very many new fans anyway, although I can very easily see him picking up some enemies.

#3. Limp Bizkit, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000)

A puerile, clunky band deserves a puerile, clunky album title, I suppose. Somehow, this thing sold 13 million copies worldwide, which is probably enough for me to lose any remaining faith I might have had in humanity, and certainly enough for me to lose faith in humanity’s ability to effectively judge album titles.

#2. Happy Mondays, Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) (1986)

There are plenty of conversations in music history that I wish I could have been present for, but one that ranks very highly on that list is the one that must have followed Tony Wilson asking, “So, Mr. Ryder, what are you planning on calling your first record?”

#1. Fiona Apple, 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’ll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You Know That You’re Right (1999)

Eight years after this record was first released, I’m not sure it’s possible to ever top this title. Consisting of a poem — a poem of such dubious literary merit that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone over the age of fourteen not being too embarrassed about it to let anyone read it — that was apparently supposed to be some kind of response to criticism of Apple’s work, its astounding silliness was magnified several times by the fact that Apple took not only the title but everything else about her career with a deadly seriousness usually reserved for nineteenth-century German philosophers. To call your album this represents a severe flaw in judgment; to call your album this and mean it is indicative of such a stunning lack of self-awareness that I’m not sure it’s likely to be equaled in my lifetime — and certainly not on a major label.

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