JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Naming your album

What convention do you usually go with?
-Self-titled?
-Pick a song to name the album after?
-Come up with some other sort of phrase/name?

And why do you do what you do?

We gave this a lot of thought for Justice's cd. After considering the options we decided on naming it after one of the songs on the album. The song we chose to use for the name of the cd is A Girl Is More. We picked this, not necessarily because it is the best song, but because it seems to us to be the best title for the album. We thought that this title would be most attractive to potential buyers. The song is the fourth song on the cd.

Tom

Todd,

Howdy! Good to hear from you!

I am working on three CDs right now. I have most of the music written for them and much of it recorded. I still need to do a lot of mixing and then mastering. I expect to have two of them done this year and one done early next year. And titles are still undecided for two of them.

To self-title just doesn't appeal to me...it comes across as though little or no thought was put into it. Others may feel differently about that. But, when I got to purchase a CD, with not a particular one in mind, self-titled CDs are usually the last ones I look at. My thinking is if that's the best tehy can do for a title to attract me, I'm leary about the cuts. They tell me absolutley nothing about the theme, the style, the mood, etc. I want the title to give me a brief glimpse of the contents...make me want to listen.

Using the title of one of the cuts would be okay if it captured the mood or the theme of the cuts, for the most part.

Using an original phrase is most appealing to me. One of my CDs is original Classical Baroque Piano pieces with rock and pop backgrounds. The title I have chosen is "My Piano is Baroque...And I Can't Fix It". It's kind of a catchy play on words, in my opinion. Another CD is all tropical music. I don't have a clue what I am going to call it. And the third one is all Country Chicken Pickin' instrumentals. That one might get named after one of the songs..."Pickin' On The Chicken". That's not final, but it's looking pretty good right now.

Hope that helps to answer your question. It's a GREAT question! I'm surprised there haven't been more responses to it. Take care, my friend.

Alan

I'm not hidebound to using the title of a song as the album title; I have done that once, and may do it again. Al's right, though--the title has to be catchy, and has to sum up the general theme of the album, or there's no point.

Since my songs don't usually lack for good titles (my audiences create them for me), I was able to call the last album "Santa's Fallen and He Can't Get Up." And the next one, if it turns out like I expected, will be also named after one of the cuts--"Dead Things in the Shower," the song me and Bobbie Gallup co-wrote.

Joe

Oops. You didn't need to "hear5" that twice.

Joe

I don't seem to like titleless / self-titled albums, but I've used all other options:

Start Here song title and conceptual title: it starts here! (full disclosure: I chose this title before writing the song)
Another Day excerpted from the lyrics of How Can It Be
Life Baggage conceptual title: this was my life's baggage (musically) up to that point

With both Life Baggage and Start Here, the title is somewhat of an over-arching theme that I decided upon upfront, before recording even one note. The Another Day title was coined by my band members, while we were in the studio recording the EP. In hindsight, it's not the best title since everyone and their uncle appears to have released a CD titled Another Day...

How about "Tropic Al" for the title?

Kevin,

Good suggestion! I have it tucked away with my notes for the CD. It's a strong possibility. Thanks!

Alan

Also, Kevin, just to unconfuse the confused (I don't know if you are one of them or not): In the music business I have always been known by and generally go by "Al David". My wife, my family and most of my friends thoroughly hate "Al" because they have known me as "Alan" all their lives. So, everything music gets the "Al" moniker but everythings else gets "Alan". It doesn't matter to me. I'm no prettier either way and don't play any worse either way!

Also, I've been called a lot worse than either "Al" or "Alan". But, since this is a family site, I'll no elaborate!

Alan, aka "Al"

Joe,

Anything you say is worth hearing twice!

Alan

Interesting thoughts. Thanks!

I am currently making my second album now, with my band Hop On Pop, and am wrestling with names for the album. I have thought about all three approaches for this one, but am leaning toward the conceptual thing, as I have been encouraged to by many. (The first one was called As Drawn By Ethan, Age 2.)

I had what I thought was the title in MIXTAPE, as the music on the album is stylistically schitzophrenic. But that was met with some resistance by my (sole) bandmate; "Too generic". But I just recently came up with what I think is going to be the title:
Chicken on a Bicycle

We'll see how that one holds up. But I feel really good about it.

I've completed 3 CD's now for the RPM Challenge thing.

2007: Titled "Land of Second Chances": from a line in the song "It's Time To Roll".

2008: Titled "No Thunder": I wanted to include a song called Clap of Thunder, but couldn't get it finished in time!

2009: Titled "When That Hammer Comes Down": It is the title of a song on the CD, but I just like that phrase.

Kevin

Ok then. How about "Tropic Alan more"

Is there a flow, an overal feel, or a general theme running thru this recording? If so, consider it a package deal and you want a title that works for every cut.

When I chose a title for my solo CD, I used a lyric from within a song. So it wasn't the song title, but if you listened to the words, you would hear it. There was a song ("Lord Baltimore") written in 1984 that I recorded and thought the lyric, "the Orange sky" was picturesque and would work as a title so I chose it. Shortly thereafter, another artist hit the scene with a Debut Album titled "The Orange Sky."
His got more airplay.

so far i've only had two official album, in the first I had a song called "Ancient Shadows" and considering there were 19 trakcs called them "ancient shadows" in plural and subtitled it "the ghost and the fairy" because it was splitted in two parts.
The one forthcoming is called "the underliving" and there's a song already with that name, it's sort of invented world about a parallel world unseen and veiled for us that's not living but "underliving" sort of weird, but well...
by the way I guess the world "The Underliving" may suggest wrong impressions, what would you have thought it was. I can't change it already cos it's part of my illustrated book the way it already is

It's an interesting question - am enjoying reading the responses.

All of mine are named after a song on the album. I know albums have probably seen their heyday but I have always loved concept albums and albums that follow a (sometimes loose) theme. To me, the whole of those is always greater than the sum of its parts.

That's what I tend to do - not reaching that goal of course but shooting for it.

So if I write a song I particularly like, I start to wonder if it could be part of a theme. If so, I'll start writing to that theme. Most often the title of the album is the title of that first song but not always. Occassionally, I write a song to the theme that has a title that expresses the theme better and then end up using that.

Scott

Interesting thread. I've always assumed the name of the album would be the name of one of the songs. I've never thought of using a phrase from one of the songs or anything. Hmmmm.