The 1975’s massively successful second album ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ is a bit of a mouthful isn’t it? No, seriously. It’s a rather unwieldy title that’s certainly not lacking self-confidence, but it’s not the most sprawling LP title out there. Here are 11 more album names that laugh in the face of brevity…
Fiona Apple, ‘When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right.’: A pithy, concise missive from the US singer.
Chumbawumba, ‘The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether From Lack of Ideas or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother’s Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don’t Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to ‘Guard’ Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It’s Over, Then It’s Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won.’: Yep.
Cap’n Jazz, ‘Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over’: A fun game of ‘name everything you can see around you’ courtesy of the cult American emo band.
T. Rex, ‘My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair… but Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows’: Marc Bolan and his crew enjoyed a trippy, psychedelic tongue-twister. This was the first…
T.Rex, ‘Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow or a Creamed Cage in August’: … and there was this surreal, nonsensical beauty in 1974.
’Marnie Stern, ‘This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That’: Marnie’s attempt at writing the sequel to The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ didn’t quite work out as planned.
Devendra Banhart, ‘Oh Me Oh My… the Way the Day Goes by the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit’: Do dogs dream? If they do, would they dream lusty serenades to the festive season? We will never know.
Soulwax, ‘Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent.’: Less a title, more just a statement from DJ duo Soulwax.
Mew, ‘No More Stories Are Told Today, I’m Sorry They Washed Away, No More Stories, the World Is Grey, I’m Tired, Let’s Wash Away’: We’re all tired, Mew. Tired mainly, at this precise moment, of reading this title.
Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, ‘Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than the Last; The Inexorable March of Progress Will Lead Us All to Happiness’: Progress being the optimum word amid the many, many words there – these proggy Oxforders had songs than regularly spilt over the 10 minute mark.
Super Furry Animals, ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochocynygofod’: Translated, brilliantly, as Welsh village ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogoch in space.