Why are CD sales plummeting year after year? It's not because iTunes is so much better; it's because some of the album titles were so retarded we were ashamed to be overheard asking for them.
Don't believe us? Imagine yourself walking up to the counter and asking if they have a copy of...
After sales of Don't Believe Any of This Shit, They All Lies came in less than expected, the New Orleans rapper flipped his style up with this album.
C-Murder's newfound commitment to complete honesty and transparency in his rap operation actually began a couple of years earlier, when he apparently decided he could not refer to himself as "C-Murder" unless he shot a guy. He's currently serving life in prison, though it appears to be in one of those prisons where you're still allowed to record rap albums.
OK, we're thinking your girlfriend would be pretty safe with Fall Out Boy. Maybe they'd steal her makeup and read bad poetry about how difficult it is to be famous. After returning from her "Evening Out," we're thinking she'd love you twice as much for the mere fact that you can make it through dinner without crying three times.
If the situation arises, we'd strongly recommend letting your girl spend an evening with Fall Out Boy rather than, say, Tommy Lee.
As Wikipedia puts it, the awkward album title was intended "as a gentle homage to English hamlet life, and by extension, to the innocence and idealization of past times and people." Are you rocking yet? It would be one thing if the title was meant to be an ironic contrast to the scrotum-grinding guitar anthems on the album. Instead this rocks about as hard as, well, if a Village Green Preservation Society actually put out an album.
We have to give them credit, though. It seems like they put too much thought into the title and ended up with something with so many layers of irony that it only made sense to them. But, too much thought is certainly preferable to ...
First, we already knew it was music, Madonna. We found it in a music store. Second, the band 311 already named an album Music a few years before. Maybe they were going for a "so lame it's cool" title but if so, that's not the sort of thing you can do twice.
No, this reminds us more of the generic brands they used to have at the grocery store, white cans that just said "beer" in black, block letters and tasted like it had been used to bathe a dog just prior to canning. Usually when the creators of the product can barely be bothered to name it, it probably is not the result of loving, diligent craftsmanship.
This one definitely wins the Most Pretentious award. Officially the longest album title, ever, this is actually a poem written in response to some bad press Fiona got and, we're thinking, probably deserved.
As the saying goes, revenge is best served by making your next album title a complete laughing stock that sounds like something an unfunny high-school punk band would do "just to piss people off."
It's entirely possible the terrorists could make a propaganda film depicting a stereotypical ignorant American, and accidentally wind up with Toby Keith. This album title sums him up in three syllables, mocking a phrase used to describe the initial phase of the war on Iraq.
Of course, Toby wasn't actually "shock'n" any of us, not to mention all of us. Shocking would be if he made an album with a clever title, or one called Move On Dot Orgasm or Marry Me, Sean Penn.
What does this even mean? Is this album the point where the band knows it sucks so much it can never make another good album again? Is this the point where a musician's mind degrades to the point it loses all ability to know anything ever again?
This one sounds like the band had five minutes to submit an album title and thought of the first word that had two different spellings.
You know your album title is bad when you need to put the meaning in parenthesis after it. It seems like the title is a take on the word rapperphobia, with "Murr" from "Murray" stuck in there. Perhaps Murray meant to suggest that while rapperphobia means "a fear of hip-hop," rapmurrphobia just means a fear of real hip-hop, which of course is generated in plenty by Mr. Murray. Perhaps he means that the perpetrators of fake or weak hip-hop have a condition where they are afraid of so-called real rappers like himself due to his ability to bring the raw shit they love on the streets.
These are all things that might be worth pondering, if only the title didn't sound like something mispronounced by Mushmouth from Fat Albert.
How do you manage to make a Mozart reference in your title (it' a play on the Mozart opera "Cosi fan tutte") and still come off sounding about as intellectual as Weird Al Yankovic? Look no further than the cover art, which features: a tea cozy (Cosi… close enough!) a fan and a dessert called Tutti Frutti.
Put it all together and you've got an album that looks like it was named and designed by a panel of kindergarteners. If only all artists looked to the Brain Buster round of Think Fast for album title inspiration.
We can't put our finger on it, but there' something wrong about this one. There's nothing overtly filthy about it. It's like Elton John's effort to root out any homophobia in our subconscious.
Sure, the album is really about Elton' early career with his writer Bernie Taupin, who is the Brown Dirt Cowboy because he lives on a ranch and probably likes riding horses and roping steers. But since most people don't know that, it just sounds like a night in Elton John' life that most of us just didn't want to know about.
Talk about letting your music do the talking! They've got a terrible band name, and to stay with that theme, they've managed to spew out some of the most horrendous album titles of all time. In addition to Hairway to Steven, an apparent homage to some guy's love patch, we have:
Locust Abortion Technician
Psychic … Powerless … Another Man's Sac
Rembrandt Pussyhorse
Piouhgd
When it comes time to hand out a Lifetime Achievement Award, not only will the Butthole Surfers win, but we'll likely wind up naming the award after them.
Cher released this online-only album of her less commercial work, apparently to slake the Web community' thirst for an edgier, more personal album from someone who only sounds good when she' singing through a synthesizer.
But, lest they think she was just an out-of-touch old lady looking to capitalize on a trend she didn't understand, she gave it a hip, Internet-savvy title. If only that title didn't translate to "Not Dot Com Dot Mercial" when read aloud in the language she was attempting to speak.
C'mon Deep Purple. We thought it was bad when you were coming out with album titles like Come Taste the Band, but now you're not even trying. We know it' 28 years into your career but you'd think you'd have gotten all the "purple" puns out of your system by now.
How about Purplexed Purpetual Purpetrators? Is that enough for you? Do you think we get it by now? PURPLE. Yes, that word is in your band name.
Two peanuts were walking down the street. One was a-salted! This album title is basically that joke but 400 times worse.
And what kind of hip-hop crime is that? Assault with a deadly pepper? What kind of pepper is deadly? Maybe a really super hot pepper could be slipped into someone' food but it probably wouldn't really be assault unless you physically stuffed the pepper down their throat. Or if you were attacking a baby. You could probably do some serious damage to a newborn with a plain old green pepper.
Neither of those scenarios really screams "street cred" to us, however, so maybe it's time for Salt-N-Pepa to stop taking cues from walking bad pun DJ Spinderella when naming their albums.
No genre is more prone to awful album titles than ska, especially the 18th generation Sublime ripoffs. They have the grating habit of taking a single phrase or pop-culture reference with a syllable that remotely sounds like the word "ska" and cramming the word "ska" in there instead. Try to make your own, it's fun. Just off the top of our head:
Nurse, Bring Me A Ska-lpal
Rocky vs. Skapollo Creed
Ska-tom Bomb: Hiro-ska-ma and Naga-ska-ki
First of all, that' not even a question, so we're not sure where the question mark came from. It reads more like the title of an insanely specific how-to article written by Satan.
Also, every time we hear it, it makes us think of eBay: "Excuse me, are you looking to buy a soul on eBay? Because the top soul seller has sold several souls including your soulless soul. Oh, you say your soul was stolen? Well, eBay is not solely responsible for stolen souls sold. For more info on our policy regarding the online store' stolen souls sold scroll below."
And, the Lord said "Let there be prog," and so it was, and it was good. Then the Lord' creation made an album with a cheesy title taken from the Lord' book, and the Lord said to his band "Why hath thou made such a cheesily titled LP? Thou didn't listen to Commandment 11: Thou shalt not fall back on bad puns or lame wordplay when out of ideas."
Yet, the Lord forgiveth Genesis, and let them sell millions of albums. However, He will never forgive Phil Collins for "Sussudio."
Wow. If the "other guy" in Hall and Oates wanted to make a name for himself, mission accomplished with this quasi-turn of phrase that teeters on the precipice of coherence.
We all know it' spelled "phunk" because he was the more hip-hop of the two, but what does this title even mean? Can rearranging your objects make you more funky? Or is "Phunk Shui" accomplished by moving this album from your living room stereo to the sidewalk five stories down?
Since R. Kelly isn't 5 years old, we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume "chocolate factory" is not referring to his butthole. And we sure as hell, on a site as dignified as ours, are not going to point out that we've seen his "lemonade gun" in action.
So maybe the "chocolate factory" reference is completely innocent. Maybe R. Kelly sees himself as a sort of Willy Wonka, figuratively escorting children around his chocolate ... uh ...
OK, that' much, much worse. Perhaps we should just move on.
OK, maybe we were wrong about the "moving on" thing. Only one title could beat out the mental image of R. Kelly's chocolate factory. This is the Sgt. Pepper' of horrible album titles.
It' also the exact kind of obnoxious, childish nonsense you could expect from a bunch of grown-up, high-school bully dirt bags. And in case you're confused, "chocolate starfish" is a reference to buttholes. Oh Fred, you're hilarious! Almost as funny as when you named a song "Nookie" just so you had something to rhyme with "cookie." Or, maybe it was the other way around.
It' so bad, you'd swear Fred and company came up with it just to be the best at something. Well, congrats, guys.
Dustin Glick,Jason Newman
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