Five huge bands with truly terrible names
The name of a rock band is a very important thing. The music we like has so much to do with our identity that we can’t ignore just how important the whole package is. It’s a fact that is nebulous and as such largely disregarded, but there is so much more to an artist than mere their musical output. We invest in the whole package they present: their image, name, backstory, character and everything else in between.
“In any context where we have taste, we have taste in a world with other people in it,” Nick Seaver, the music algorithm expert behind the book Computing Taste, explains to me. “No matter what, we’re always learning about music from outside of ourselves. The music is made by other people. Then, we decide what kind of person we want to be in a world full of other people. There’s a lot of sociology work about how taste maps to social status. I don’t think it makes sense to think of taste as something that is uniquely our own.”
In other words, if the band Anal Cunt actually had the back catalogue of The Beatles, there would still likely only be a niche clique of people happy to publicly declare themselves fans—the sociological weight of the name itself would prevent some people from getting on board with them. So, in short, names are more important than just filing labels for art.
However, for the rule, there are exceptions. In music, a slew of artists have hit lofty heights despite castigating themselves with a shoddy name when they were christened. We’ve picked out five acts who got huge while carrying around the corniest names in history. Naturally, there are hundreds of terribly named acts like Sixpence None the Richer, but they never quite rose to the ranks we’re talking about; these are acts that have proudly headlined posters.
Five bands with terrible names:
Rainbow
Rainbow mightn’t be the worst name of all time if it weren’t for the fact that the bandleader, Ritchie Blackmore, spent his whole time within it sporting the loudmouth, bad-boy persona. Once again, this mightn’t have been so bad if it was done in an ironic way, like a heavyweight boxer whose nickname is ‘Gorgeous’. No, the problem with Rainbow is that the group swanned around under the moniker as though it was tantamount to an elemental title like Poseidon.
Nevertheless, Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio and co managed to sell just shy of 30 million records worldwide under this shoddy title. Worse than its camp composition is the fact that every time they were ever mentioned, they had to be brought up as ‘Rainbow the band’. Still, there are plenty of folks who forgave it all thanks to hits like ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’.
Bread
Being a band and calling yourself ‘Bread’ is the equivalent of reaching the age of 18, getting to select your own name, and coming up with John Moore. A band name is meant to say something about the music in some way. The Strokes, for instance, sound like The Strokes; what the hell does being called Bread imply about your art? That is bland and goes stale within a week?
However, despite this, the American soft rock band from Los Angeles sold tens of millions of records and had 13 tracks chart in the US between 1970 and 1977. They became gentle AM radio favourites during that period, and once again, they always had to be referred to as ‘Bread the band’. They opted for this terrible moniker as a bread truck drove by while they were thinking of a name—proof that sometimes, you have to look beyond your own window for inspiration.
Death Cab for Cutie
Yes, of course it is a Beatles reference, but that only makes it unoriginal as well as bad. “The name was never supposed to be something that someone was going to reference 15 years on,” Ben Gibbard said of the unfortunate moment the experimental moniker stuck. “So yeah, I would absolutely go back and give it a more obvious name. But thank God for Wikipedia. At least now, people don’t have to ask me where the fucking name came from every interview.”
While at least he lived to regret it, that doesn’t explain why out of all the Magical Mystery Tour nods available to him, he chose one that sounds this crap and references one of their worst moments. Even ‘The Eggmen’ or something like ‘Goodbye, Hello’ would be better than this obscure oddity. Still, the emo indie act helped to define a generational subculture, and that is surely just down to the saving grace that the name can be shorted to purely Death Cab.
Mott the Hoople
For a name that, for some reason, sounds dirty in an unfathomable way that you’d rather not think about, there is actually an edgy backstory to the proto-glam rock band’s title. They were called Silence when they first came to the attention of Guy Stevens from Island Records, but he never liked that name. Later, while in prison on drug charges, he read a book that inspired him to make a few changes.
The book in question was the Willard Manus novel Mott the Hoople from 1966. The story follows the tale of Norman Mott, an eccentric who has various adventures in the travelling circus. Stevens figured that this was the perfect vignette for the quirky band to exist under. He clearly didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the bulk of the population haven’t got a clue what a Mott or a Hoople is, and still don’t for that matter.
U2
Bono, whose own nickname is shit in itself, recently revealed his sudden realisation that U2 “pushes out the boat on embarrassment” in an interview where he declared he also dislikes their name, most of their songs and even his own singing voice. Appearing on the Awards Chatter podcast, this came as a great shock to listeners, purely in terms of the apparent self-awareness on display.
His self-loathing diatribe began when he was asked about the origins of the band’s name. “In our head, it was like the spy plane,” he explained, “A U-boat, it was futuristic – as it turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence, no I don’t like that name. I still don’t really like the name.” And it was only downhill from there. Despite this, they’re right up there with the best-selling bands of all time.
