“What’s in a name?”: The importance of choosing a good artist moniker
What’s in a name? While a rose by any other name would still smell just as sweet, the same might not hold true for band names. Would an artist’s discography resonate as strongly with audiences if it carried an objectively bad name? More importantly, would their success levels have differed if they had chosen a better one? In the world of music, a name can shape perceptions, attract listeners, and even influence the trajectory of a group’s career.
Picking a name is one of the first hurdles that artists encounter. It’s a daunting task, particularly because most bands will barely have explored their sound or style before they’re forced to attach a name to it. Picking out a word or two to define that growing sound, to tell people what you’re about before they’ve even hit play on your music, is never going to be easy.
In the age of social media and the internet, picking the correct band name has become increasingly important and difficult. Artists still need to consider what will look good on a gig poster, draw in the right crowds, and accurately represent their sound, but they also need to consider modern methods of music discovery.
Is your band name SEO-friendly? Is your band name playlistable? Is your band name available as a username on every relevant form of social media? Is your band name ever so slightly similar to the name of a corporation that might sue you years into your career? There are a whole host of factors to consider.
Some artists nail it from the get-go. Aussie dance outfit Confidence Man have honed a sound as self-assured and slick as their name suggests, and there are no unrelated results when you Google their name. The Last Dinner Party’s style in the studio and on-stage is dramatic and grand, in keeping with their name, and Fontaines D.C. contains a nod to their homeland, which still inspires their music.
Other artists have made objective blunders with their band names of choice but have managed to find success nonetheless. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, whose name is just as drawn out as their discography, have somehow overcome the clunkiness of their band name and amassed a mammoth cult following. Perhaps it’s because of how weird the name is, often matching up with their psychedelic sound, or just because of how downright stupid it is. It’s hard to forget a name like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, though it might get twisted around your tongue.
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and The Warrington Runcorn New-Town Development Plan serve as other examples of names that haunt the nightmares of festival poster designers, requiring an entire line of space or a shortening to Pigs x7. Still, those are names that are both fairly reflective of the bands they accompany, committing to the stoner lifestyle and the northwest, respectively.
There’s no trouble locating Pigs’ discography on Google by copying and pasting the word seven times, but there are some cult bands who have committed themselves to fairly unfindable names online. While Jockstrap may be the name of an electronic duo to those familiar with the scene surrounding the Brixton Windmill, a search for their name will still ring up some unwelcome underwear ads.
And if you’re finding it hard to locate Jockstrap, good luck locating any information about the London-based band Famous. Even the method of throwing the word “band” after your Google search won’t work for this one, as the search engine struggles through pages of information about The Beatles and The Stones before coming anywhere close to ‘Nice While It Lasted’.
A poor band name, in the contemporary landscape in particular, then, can certainly limit a band’s visibility to audiences. It seems like the more specific, the more memorable, the better, but that rule certainly didn’t apply to The Band back in the 1960s, or Prince when he adopted an unpronounceable symbol as an artist name, and it doesn’t apply to musicians who have already established themselves in the modern day, either.
This is particularly true in the electronic sphere. After securing his place as a modern electronic pioneer as Aphex Twin, Richard James has taken on a number of other aliases as side projects, including user18081971, while Four Tet took up the truly indecipherable, unsearchable, unpronounceable name ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ. It would be obnoxious if they hadn’t already established themselves as legends. The importance of an artist’s name seems to slip away after that initial visibility has been achieved or a cult following cemented, after which anything goes.
Picking the right name for your project is certainly important in the modern music industry. It’s already so hard to stand out as a band or as an artist to secure playlist spots and support slots amidst the ever-building competition, and ensuring that your name adequately reflects your sound can ensure that you’re giving yourself the best chance in those situations. It should be concise, considered, searchable and original, but it’s also not the be-all and end-all.
Some truly awful band names have found devoted followings and worked their way into the charts, defying the SEO odds and the name naysayers. What’s in a band name? The potential to make things a little easier on yourself in the start, to show audiences who you are before they figure it out for themselves, but nothing that will make your sound any less sweet.
