Jimmy Eat World should be part of the conversation due to their acronym.

Jimmy Eat World should be part of the conversation due to their acronym.

Cherry Poppinβ Daddies
I like the Cherry Poppinβ Daddies tribute band, the Hymen Bustin Fathers
But they played at the Super Bowl halftime show once so they are okay /s
I remember when I was a pre teen and I wanted a Limp Bizkit CD for Christmas, my mother said that the name of the band sounded vulgar and she wouldn't get it for me. Instead she got me a Cherry Poppin' Daddies CD... Smh
I'm sure it was never about the band name. She probably heard Limp Bizkit on the radio and later in the day heard "Zoot Suit Riot" and was like "I know what will make my son fit in at Middle School. Big band swing music"
Sigh...
Relevant Todd in the Shadows that came out just a few days ago.
The band ΓΆOoOoOoOoOo is a bit unwieldy.
Supposedly pronounced as "caterpillar" in whatever language you prefer.
Next you're gonna tell me The Police isn't a group of cops
Oh honey, Freddie was a bigger Queen than Elizabeth, Danaerys, and Latifah rolled into one.
That played concerts at sun city in apartheid south Africa and have heavily glossed over the fact afterwards
IMO, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has an awfully high good band/dumb name differential
!!! (Chk Chk Chk)
I love them as a band and the name makes sense once you know what it's representing, but it's terrible for searching or recommending to people.
The Beatles
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. Such a pain in the arse when you have to refer to them.
To be completely honest, I don't consider any name to be bad.Β
You may say AxCx is terrible name, but once you give them a listen it exactly fits the name. Same goes for Hijokaidan, who are actually named based on one of fan's suggestion claiming that "escape staircase" suits their sound more. Party Cannon is absolutely hillarious imo, when you look at the logo and the sound. Brojob also has a name that fits their lyrical themes.
In some cases the name may come out a bit lame, but bad names? Nah. I don't consider any name bad, most of them sound either fucking epic and/or hillarious when you look at the full picture.
Come on, let musicians have some fun.
Just one note. Unfortunate names do exist. If a band has name that is also commonly used to refer to other things, it is really tricky to find them unless they are popular enough. I remember trying to find some music from a band called "6 cylinder". You can imagine the struggle.
Intentionally bad or unintentionally bad?
Imagine Dragons
No, Imagine Dragons is kind of cool... if you believe them when they say it's not their real band name. They originally came up with a phrase that meant something special to all of them, but they didn't think it would work as a band name, so they anagrammed it into Imagine Dragons (I assume some letters were reused or left off somehow). So there's this big mystery over what their real name is.
And that kind of plays into some dragon lore where if you know a dragon's true name, you have control over it. You don't know Imagine Dragons' true name β no one does. Perfectly acceptable if you think a band having a secret name is lame. They've said at some point they may reveal it, but they're afraid people will be disappointing, because as they originally said, it wouldn't make for a cool name.
if you know a dragonβs true name, you have control over it.
I thought that was Devils??
It's pretty common across a lot of fantasy creatures tbh.
Though it's often True Name as in a fantasy idea that everyone and everything has a secret name that even they don't know, one that the universe gave them. Rather than just knowing their given name.
Another common thing is that dragons speak True Speech, a magical language that's understood by every living creature with a brain
I already disliked them, you didn't need to make them even more unlikeable
Butthole Surfers have not been mentioned yet?
Yeah, the title of the thread is worst names ever. That's on an orthogonal axis with most likely to make an 11 year old boy giggle
For some reason they're always intertwined in my head with another terribly named band, Diarrhea Planet.
It's probably one of those ironic names, but Psychedelic Porn Crumpets always makes me die a little when I'm trying to tell people about 'em. Great band, dumb name.
I think it is a bit funny to see this question, I was in a thread just now finding out there is a band named Xavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffx And apparently is it a abbreviation for "Acidic Vaginal Liquid Explosion Generated by Mass Amounts of Filthy Fecal Fisting and Sadistic Septic Syphilic Sodomy Inside the Infected Maggot Infested Womb of a Molested Nun Dying Under the Roof of a Burning Church While a Priest Watches and Ejaculates in Immense Perverse Pleasure Over His First Fresh Fetus",
Local Santa Rosa band back in the mid to late 90's called Mother Teresa's Cunt
Lots of problematic song titles too.
Thereβs a punk band who were called Slaves. After a free years of people saying βare you sure thatβs the name you want to go with, being a couple of white guys?β They decided no they were not and changed it to Soft Play
I heard a song by an indie band called Purulent Vagina.
It sounded exactly how you'd expect it to.
Vertical Horizon
Yeah, their music, in general, does not move me but the main guy was friends with Neil Peart who played maybe 5 tracks with them so... I have those 5 tracks in my rotation
I am just trying to figure out what a vertical horizon would be. It sounds kinda badass at first but then I'm like... It's just contradictory!
I'm thinking about bands where I wouldn't wear their shirt in public despite liking the band.
Lamb of God was originally "Burn the priest" which while very metal, could be awkward in public.
Other notable mentions are Snapped Ankles, Pissed Jeans, Wet leg, and the Cherry poppin daddies.
Not as visceral as a lot of the other options, but it is very annoying when bands (especially smaller bands) formed in the last 15-20 years choose names that make it difficult to find their music online. Saw a band as openers once called "1,2,3". Similar for bands choosing very simple words like "Apartment", "Paint", or "Basement". Even bigger bands like "Shame", "Wednesday", and "Idles" are tricky IMO.
Name your band whatever you want, of course, but understand the consequences of your actions!
There's this band that I like called 3 - easy enough to Google if you search "3 band" - But if I'm driving in my car and I want to use voice commands to play music by them, well too fucking bad. I'm also not going to take my phone out of my pocket and look them up while driving. So I guess they won't get the plays.
I miss having a CD player in my car with my sun visor CD slip.
Not technically a band but I have always thought the DJ called 'Breakfast' was a terrible choice
The worst band names are the ones so generic that when you look up the band, you can't find them.
It's, in my experience, especially bad in black metal where there are several bands named something akin to Death, Kill, Suicide and so on. It's like having a rapper calling themselves Rap or Money or Hip-Hop. I'm sure that is an actual possibility, come to think of it, because a lot of rappers also have painfully generic stage names for their genre.
It is a nightmare to search for. I think the only band I can think of, that's gotten away with naming themselves something generic is Kiss, but it kinda works for them because their name somewhat clashes with their genre. Also they are super mainstream and everybody knows them, so eh. I guess if you hit the lottery as an artist and go mainstream, your shitty, generic band name is not an issue.
However, in black metal it's a nightmare because many artists are underground (by choice) and doing themselves no favors having super generic names. I literally came across a black metal band once named Black Metal. Like wtf am I supposed to do with that?
Then again, if I have understood the BM culture correctly, it is probably a deliberate troll because it's avangarde to be inaccessible in this genre. The fewer people who know your music and the fewer fans you have, the cooler you are. That's my understanding at least. They take the snobbery of "they were better when they weren't mainstream" to the extreme.
Vaporwave went one better by putting symbols in the band name. Sometimes the band name is just a bunch of triangles or something.
Of course, there was that time that Prince changed his name to a symbol, and there's also a band called !!! (pronounced "chik-chik-chik")
Oh no xD you're right! I have seen similarity trends in the Witch House genre, though most artists are kind enough to replace for example A with a V and E with and X or stuff like that. That's doable at least. But weird symbols or exclamation points is just madness lol
There was a brief time when Tommy Chong was on a band under the name "4 N*'s and a C*," and every now and again I remember that fact and think "What the actual fuck was he thinking."
Acidic Vaginal Liquid Explosion Generated by Mass Amounts of Filthy Fecal Fisting and Sadistic Septic Syphilic Sodomy Inside the Infected Maggot Infested Womb of a Molested Nun Dying Under the Roof of a Burning Church While a Priest Watches and Ejaculates in Immense Perverse Pleasure Over His First Fresh Fetus, or Xavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffx for short.
Honourable Mentions: Anthrax (less bad than others but still awkward when mentioning the band in casual conversation), Shotgun Willy (solo artist)
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