Many of the greatest albums of all time have title tracks on them, or songs that the album is named after (London Calling, Highway 61 Revisited, etc.), but an even more interesting trend is naming the album after lyrics, rather than one of the songs. Here are eight classic albums that took their titles from the lyrics.
1. Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (1969)
Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album is mostly made up of instrumental pieces, but the one track to feature vocals is "Willie the Pimp," featuring Zappa's childhood friend Captain Beefheart. At the end of his brief performance, Beefheart starts shouting about "hot meat, hot rats, hot cats, hot grits," giving the album its title.
2. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the rare albums that's popularly thought of as an entire piece of music, instead of a collection of individual songs, which makes the chorus of "Brain Damage" seem like the chorus for the entire album, with its classic lyric, "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."
3. Genesis - Selling England By the Pound (1973)
Genesis' fourth LP Selling England by the Pound is a concept album about the disintegration of British identity, a theme laid out in the opening track "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight," which contains the lyrics (written by frontman Peter Gabriel) that the album's title comes from.
4. Elvis Costello - My Aim is True (1977)
There are plenty of songs on Elvis Costello's My Aim is True that could have been excellent title tracks ("Welcome to the Working Week," "Less Than Zero," "Waiting for the End of the World"), but instead, Costello chose an unassuming lyric from the ballad "Alison" as the title for his debut LP.
5. Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)
Many bands release self-titled albums, and some even release self-titled songs (Black Sabbath did both), but very few have self-referencing lyrics. The title of Devo's 1978 debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! comes from the chorus of the band's bizarre mission statement "Jocko Homo."
6. Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense (1984)
Though the song "Girlfriend is Better" originally appeared on Talking Head's 1983 album Speaking in Tongues, the song's closing refrain "stop making sense" served as the title for the band's 1984 live album and concert film.
7. Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)
Kurt Cobain always claimed that his lyrics were secondary to melody and didn't really mean anything, and this is most evident in the third verse of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," when Cobain sings, "I found it hard, it's hard to find/Oh well, whatever, never mind," seemingly casting away any significance of his own words. However, Cobain must have found the phrase "never mind" to be significant if he chose it as the title of the album.
8. Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997)
Built to Spill's albums usually have strangely profound titles, such as There is No Enemy and There's Nothing Wrong with Love, but the band's best album title is based on one of its most beautiful lyrics, "Where you gonna be?/Where will you spend eternity?/I'm gonna be perfect from now on/I'm gonna be perfect starting now," from the album's epic opening track "Randy Described Eternity."
What other albums got their names this way? Let us know in the comments section!
