Where Did You Get That Name?!
So you’re in a band but you don’t have a name yet. Classic problem.
You’ve tried the Childish Gambino trick of the old name generator but it hasn’t produced any gold yet. Well panic not because some of best bands’ names had rather dubious beginnings:
Coldplay
Coldplay might be known for writing their own lyrics, but their own band name? Nope. They were originally called Starfish until another band they knew who were called Coldplay (after an anthology booked titled Child’s Reflection: Cold Play) decided to get rid of their name and Starfish asked if they could take. Thank goodness.
Vampire Weekend
Lead singer Erza Koening decided that what he wanted to do was a make a film about vampires in Cape Cod featuring a boy called Walcott. The film never happened but the theme stuck and if you’ve listened to their first album XX you’ll recognise Cape Cod and Walcott feature too.
Nickelback
Apparently Mike Kroeger use to say ‘here’s your nickel back’ so many times when he was working in Starbucks that when thinking of a name for his band he couldn’t escape it. Shame it wasn’t ‘here’s your soya vanilla double shot latte’ that rolls much better off the tongue.
Foster the People
Just as we all have that penny dropping moment when we realise we’ve been singing the lyrics wrongly, it seems as we’ve been doing the same with Foster the People. Lead singer Mark Foster, originally wanted the band to be called Foster & The People, which does make much more sense really, except the audience kept wrongly calling them Foster the People. Guess it stuck!
LL Cool J
If you ever thought LL Cool J stood for something street or in fact cool, you’d be wrong. It actually stands for Ladies Love Cool James (LL Cool J’s name is James if you needed that explained), rather cute really.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Even as adults there is something about rebelling against teachers that doesn’t wear off, and Lynyrd Skynyrd is no different. Their gym teacher didn’t like long hair, the teacher’s name was Leonard Skinner – it’s not hard to see where this is going.
Cage The Elephant
Cage the Elephant have a crazy guy running around after a show in Tennessee to thank for their name. He ran over to singer Matthew Schultz and ranted that he had to ‘cage the elephant, cage the elephant’. Whether they caged the elephant or not remains a mystery but they did name a band after him.
So go forth and find an obscure children’s poetry book, get people to pronounce your name wrong, or name it after your old science teacher – inspiration is everywhere.
This post was categorised in Archive.