Alone Again Or, Not Fade Away, Party Fears Two - seemingly nonsensical titles

I think “Party Fears Two” was drawn from a local newspaper headline about a disturbance at a party.

 

Not a well known band except for garage collectors, When I Was A Children - The Bougalieu.

 

7 and 7 Is
Your Mind and We Belong Together

 

I thought of a few but couldn't remember the exact title. I cut and pasted that from Google! Whenever I listen to Forever Changes, an album I love (no pun intended), there's a lot of tracks I don't know the title of while it's on, but I know the music very well.

 

Other than Bob Dylan Captain Beefheart/Don Van Vliet might own this thread.

 

You would think so but, in fact, Guided By Voices/Robert Pollard own this thread.

 

I'm a lifelong American English speaker, and I think both of these are actually used in the lyrics, but both of these nonsensical titles made the top 10 in recent years:

"Beneath Your Beautiful"
"Scars to Your Beautiful"

In my version of the language, "beautiful" is not a noun. They leave me asking, "Your beautiful what?" Smile? Body? Balloon?

 

It's meant as two titles: "Maybe the People Would Be the Times" or "Between Clark and Hilldale." The "or" title convention was common for novels and plays until the early 20th century.

I once suspected "Your Mind and We Belong Together" might also be intended as two titles -- "Your Mind" and "We Belong Together," but I'm probably wrong.

 

Speaking of Genesis:

 

Michael Nesmith had quite a few:

Daily Nightly
Auntie's Municipal Court
Some Of Shelly's Blues
Writing Wrongs
The Crippled Lion

 

Bread's 'Baby I'm-A Want You' is a pretty horrific linguistic mangling.

 

Just a couple that "read bizarrely" on the surface...

Today Mueller - Alice Cooper 1969
Mine For Me - Rod Stewart (Written by Paul McCartney)

 

Van Vliet’s titles always make sense given the lyric.

 

Pink Floyd - The Gold It's in the...

 

7 and 7 refers to Arthur Lee and his girlfriend Anita being born on the same date. And if you turn over the 45, the b-side is called "No. 14".

 

Has it ever been disclosed what Big Star's "ST 100/6" is supposed to signify?

 

Have you ever heard of The Fall..............?

 

I always assumed it was a play on “You’re Mine and We Belong Together”, but that’s only guesswork on my part!

 

Also, almost every episode of the Bullwinkle and Rocky TV show (1959-64) uses that device, often with wonderful puns. One of the best is "Avalanche is Better Than None" or "Snows Your Old Man".

 

If I like the song, anything that makes a title memorable is good. Many titles that are banal and similar to others just confuse me.

 

"Caroline, No" could be the greatest song title I have encountered.

 

Ah! That's a good guess!

 

I'm a huge fan. Most of MES's titles have some internal grammatical logic, even if the combination off words seems odd - Bingo Masters Breakout, Noel's Chemical Effluence, Hot Aftershave Bop etc. And then there are the ones that demand a second look, are just that much further out there and yet are still brilliant - my favourites being To Nk Roachment: Yarbles, Mere Pseud Mag. Ed and of course The Birmingham School of Business School. Good call.

 

I don't know about the other two but Alone Again Or is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded and would still be so even if it had been titled Flippity Floppity Floop.

 

Early R.E.M. has a bunch of these, but “Wolves, Lower” is the one that immediately comes to mind.