What is the longest album title ever?
An album’s title is an essential anchorage of an artist’s studio offering to the world.
While occasionally daft, Sparklehorse’s Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is a throwaway piece of fun gibberish, and others, such as Public Enemy’s How To Sell Your Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?, stand as atrocious tongue-twisters, despite their earnest sentiment.
Sometimes, a band simply has too much to say to squeeze into a pithy or focused LP moniker. If you thought The Beatles were pushing the character count with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Marc Bolan back when he was Tyrannosaurus Rex titling his 1968 debut My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair But Now They’re Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows was taking things too far, then you’re frankly not ready for the following album near-paragraphs.
Following 1996’s acclaimed debut, Tidal, singer-songwriter Fiona Apple wrote a poetic riposte against critics who had lambasted a cover feature on SPIN, sketching out a short passage titled 1999’s third album while also swiping the previously held long name record from a volume of The Best… Album in the World…Ever! compilation series: 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.
Apple’s record stood without challenge until Belgian electronic collective Soulwax did one better by about 100 characters, slapping 2007’s remix record with the impressive: 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.
So, what is the longest album title?
Only a year later, Soulwax’s standard would be bested by anarcho-punk, ‘Tubthumping’ outfit Chumbawamba, entering the official Guinness World Records with a hefty 156 words for their 13th album in March 2008.
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.
A critique of the professional gatekeepers of art and culture, Chumbawamba still possessed a sharp political rigour after nearly 30 years, making an artful statement on the arts’ commercialisation in a manner one will remember. Chumbawamba would eke out 2009’s ABCDEFG, before calling it a day three years later.
